A Manuscript Masquerade

Research Advisory Boards to Facilitate Organizational Research

The authors argue that the currently dominant paradigm for the design, conduct, and evaluation of organizational research is limited. Those limitations hamper the generation and accumulation of significant research and may result in a variety of other dysfunctional consequences. Collaborative approaches to the research process are presented and one, termed the research advisory board (RAB), is discussed in detail. The RAB, a group of scholars who provide guidance with a research project from its early stages, is seen as a mechanism to counter some limitations of the current process. As such, it would complement current procedures to yield a new, more constructive paradigm. We believe RABs would generally improve the quality of research, sharply increase the number of problems that are identified at research stages where they are correctable, lead to early recognition of fatal flaws, potentially increase research creativity, and provide a more level playing field for organizational researchers who do not have other access to collaborative mechanisms.

Peer-review practices of psychological journals: The fate of published articles, submitted again

A growing interest in and concern about the adequacy and fairness of modern peer-review practices in publication and funding are apparent across a wide range of scientific disciplines. Although questions about reliability, accountability, reviewer bias, and competence have been raised, there has been very little direct research on these variables.

The present investigation was an attempt to study the peer-review process directly, in the natural setting of actual journal referee evaluations of submitted manuscripts. As test materials we selected 12 already published research articles by investigators from prestigious and highly productive American psychology departments, one article from each of 12 highly regarded and widely read American psychology journals with high rejection rates (80%) and nonblind refereeing practices.

With fictitious names and institutions substituted for the original ones (e.g., Tri-Valley Center for Human Potential), the altered manuscripts were formally resubmitted to the journals that had originally refereed and published them 18 to 32 months earlier. Of the sample of 38 editors and reviewers, only three (8%) detected the resubmissions. This result allowed nine of the 12 articles to continue through the review process to receive an actual evaluation: eight of the nine were rejected. Sixteen of the 18 referees (89%) recommended against publication and the editors concurred. The grounds for rejection were in many cases described as “serious methodological flaws.” A number of possible interpretations of these data are reviewed and evaluated.