Reliability of reviewer ratings in the manuscript peer review process: an opportunity for improvement

On the Nature and Role of Peer Review in Mathematics

For the past three decades, peer review practices have received much attention in the literature. But although this literature covers many research fields, only one previous systematic study has been devoted to the practice of peer review in mathematics, namely a study by Geist, Löwe, and Van Kerkhove from 2010. This lack of attention may be due to a view that peer review in mathematics is more reliable, and therefore less interesting as an object of study, than peer review in other fields. In fact, Geist, Löwe, and Van Kerkhove argue that peer review in mathematics is relatively reliable. At the same time, peer review in mathematics differs from peer review in most, if not all, other fields in that papers submitted to mathematical journals are usually only reviewed by a single referee. Furthermore, recent empirical studies indicate that the referees do not check the papers line by line. I argue that, in spite of this, mathematical practice in general and refereeing practices in particular are such that the common practice of mathematical journals of using just one referee is justified from the point of view of proof validity assessment. The argument is based on interviews I conducted with seven mathematicians.

Validation of the CoRE Questionnaire for a Medical Journal Peer Review

If a peer review instrument asks concrete questions (defined as items that can only generate disagreement if reviewers have different degrees of expertise), then questionnaires could become more meaningful in terms of resolving subjectivity thus leading to more reviewer agreement. A concrete item questionnaire with well-chosen questions can also help resolve disagreement when reviewers have the same level of expertise. We have recently created the core-item reviewer evaluation (CoRE) questionnaire for which decision-threshold score levels have been created, but which have not been validated. This prospective validation of these thresholds for the CoRE questionnaire demonstrated strong agreement between reviewer recommendations and their reported score levels when tested prospectively at Clinical Medicine and Research. We conclude that using the CoRE questionnaire will help reduce peer reviewer disagreement. More importantly, when reviewer expertise varies, editors can more easily detect this and decide which opinion reflects the greater expertise.

A core-item reviewer evaluation (CoRE) system for manuscript peer review

Manuscript peer review is essential for ensuring accountability to all involved in the publication process, including authors, journals, and readers. Lack of consensus regarding what constitutes an accountable manuscript peer review process has resulted in varying practices from one journal to the next. Currently, reviewers are asked to make global judgments about various aspects of a paper for review irrespective of whether guided by a review checklist or not, and several studies have documented gross disagreement between reviewers of the same manuscript. We have previously proposed that the solution may be to direct reviewers to concrete items that do not require global judgments but rather provide a specific choice, along with referee justification for such choices. This study evaluated use of such a system via an international survey of health care professionals who had recently reviewed a health care--related manuscript. Results suggest that use of such a peer review system by reviewers does indeed improve interreviewer agreement, and thus, has the potential to support more consistent and effective peer review, if introduced into journal processes for peer review.