On 2015 Nov 24, Lydia Maniatis commented:

Pullout quote: "As long as authors are (mostly) rewarded for publishing many articles and editors are (mostly) rewarded for publishing them rapidly, new ways of gaming the traditional publication models will be invented more quickly than new control measures can be put in place."

Everyone knows it, but what can/should be done about it?

On 2015 Nov 17, ANDRES TIRADO-SANCHEZ commented:

Peer-review fraud as a “new” type of misconduct. No politics, no committees, no reports, no referees, no interviews – just highly motivated people picked by a few men of good judgement. Sir James Black. When I read the perspective published by Haug,1 I found an alarming issue with regard to the review process of scientific articles, but a déjà vu. For more than three decades, 2 it has been said that peer-review is not an objective method for evaluating scientific work, as it lends itself to many abuses by authors, reviewers and also the editors (mainly guess-editors). The acceptance or rejection of an article is mainly based on the reviewers’ comments, and the final verdict according the editor´s criteria; this is as irresponsible as peer-reviewing the work of colleagues or their own. On the other hand, peer-review is a useful tool for irrelevant articles, but it is unlikely to detect plagiarism or misconduct, which represents a major weakness; furthermore, it also generates favorable or unfavorable criticism of an article by reviewers´ conflicts of interest. This is not a problem for a country or region, a specific journal or editors, but the entire scientific community; it´s not about the money earned or fast track publications, it´s all about ethics. The process of submitting, receiving, reviewing, editing, and acceptance of an article should be amended to impose increasingly stringent filters, in order to prevent this kind of misconduct. References. Haug CJ. Peer-review fraud – Hacking the Scientific Publication Process. N Engl J Med 2015 Oct 21. Buchele JP. The new malpractice. Peer review. Kans Med 1986; 87(9): 233-6.

On 2015 Nov 17, ANDRES TIRADO-SANCHEZ commented:

Peer-review fraud as a “new” type of misconduct. No politics, no committees, no reports, no referees, no interviews – just highly motivated people picked by a few men of good judgement. Sir James Black. When I read the perspective published by Haug,1 I found an alarming issue with regard to the review process of scientific articles, but a déjà vu. For more than three decades, 2 it has been said that peer-review is not an objective method for evaluating scientific work, as it lends itself to many abuses by authors, reviewers and also the editors (mainly guess-editors). The acceptance or rejection of an article is mainly based on the reviewers’ comments, and the final verdict according the editor´s criteria; this is as irresponsible as peer-reviewing the work of colleagues or their own. On the other hand, peer-review is a useful tool for irrelevant articles, but it is unlikely to detect plagiarism or misconduct, which represents a major weakness; furthermore, it also generates favorable or unfavorable criticism of an article by reviewers´ conflicts of interest. This is not a problem for a country or region, a specific journal or editors, but the entire scientific community; it´s not about the money earned or fast track publications, it´s all about ethics. The process of submitting, receiving, reviewing, editing, and acceptance of an article should be amended to impose increasingly stringent filters, in order to prevent this kind of misconduct. References. Haug CJ. Peer-review fraud – Hacking the Scientific Publication Process. N Engl J Med 2015 Oct 21. Buchele JP. The new malpractice. Peer review. Kans Med 1986; 87(9): 233-6.

On 2015 Nov 24, Lydia Maniatis commented:

Pullout quote: "As long as authors are (mostly) rewarded for publishing many articles and editors are (mostly) rewarded for publishing them rapidly, new ways of gaming the traditional publication models will be invented more quickly than new control measures can be put in place."

Everyone knows it, but what can/should be done about it?