International Survey of Medical & Other Life Sciences Faculty: Opinion of the Peer Review Process

This 57-page report presents detailed data about what medical and other life sciences faculty from 50 major research universities think of the peer review process, and how they have experienced that process. The study gives data on the percentage of scholars who have participated as peer review referees over the past three years, how many times that they have done so, and what level of confidence they have in the peer review process. They give their opinions of the efficacy of blind review, double-blind review, and open review. It also pinpoints the percentage of faculty who have been paid for peer review, and the forms of compensation. In addition, the study presents precise data on the percentage of faculty who have been approached by open access journals to be reviewers, and the percentage who have been approached by digital repositories to serve the same role. Finally, the study reports on the opinion of the 175 scientists and scholars sampled about how the peer review process can be improved. Data and analysis in the report is presented separately for cohorts broken out by ten criteria including academic title, academic department, gender, university size, university ranking, university host nation, university public/private status and other variables. Just a few of the report’s many findings include: Nearly 65% of those sampled had served as a referee for a peer reviewed journal over the past three years. The service level was lowest in the USA where 58.33% had served, and highest in Australia, where 90% had done so. The oldest scholars were far more sceptical than others about the peer review process; more than 14% of scholars aged 60 or over were not very or not at all confident in the quality of the peer review process. Close to half of faculty working in universities that charge less than $29,500 per year in annual tuition had been approached by open access journals to be peer reviewers for them.