Sunday 26 April 2009

Peer review in practice

It is worse than I thought.
submission date: March 6th
sent to referees: March 24 (why wait almost three weeks?)
on April 14h reminders sent to referees, because they have not responded.

My own average as a referee - so far - was less than one week for reviews (including those where I had to do totally new calculations to prove authors wrong). But I am an amateur.

Judging by some recent publications titled "Are we training pitbulls for peer review" (or something like this) there is a growing worry about the cornerstone of scientific credibility - the belief that the published work IS checked and may be safely used by others.

We'll soon become much like pop artists: publish (rubbish) or perish. And science will become a beuty contest for funding. Dark future.

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