Peer Review: Benefit, Perception and Alternatives (Essay Sample)

Peer Review: Benefit, Perception and Alternatives
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Peer Review: Benefits, Perception and Alternatives
Peer review is one of method used by editors to put author’s literature or scientific work under test and validate its suitability before it is published in their journals. The peer review is believed to have started in the 18th century and by mid 19th to 20th century, the review was still disorganized. The journal editors were not thoroughly equipped or did not commit themselves to formal peer review. They were mere news editors. After the Second World War, peer review benefited largely due to the increased number of scientific research that were being conducted during that period. This scientific research were being put to initial test, reviewers were selected and aired their views before the author’s work was published hence available to the public.
Benefits of peer review
Reviews are vital to any literature or scientific work. They help the editor of that work to have a base to lay his own decision regarding that literature or scientific research. The editor’s decision would therefore be influenced by the facts therein and not hearsays. The reviewer’s view will help the editor to either reject or approve the work for publication. In most cases, authors are the beneficiaries of the whole process of review in the sense that if errors are detected in their work, they will be informed of them after a successful review is completed therefore improving the quality of the work. The hand extended to the author by the reviewers help the author to reconfigure his ideas a fresh by either revising the whole piece of work or restructuring it again.
A reader is the most important person to any written and published publication. They are the consumers of the author’s ideas and therefore should benefit from what they read and get the value of their money. Through the process of copy testing and filtering the reader is guaranteed a readable piece of work from the author. The filtering process makes it possible for a good work to see the light of the day and the bad get revised, summarized and edited to fit the required standard by the journal house policy. Good and well executed work help sell the journal to the public
Perception
There are those who feel that peer review is a working method as its benefits are tremendous. Peer review is consistently encouraged by academics but they do not believe it’s the best option. It’s from here the critics of peer review draws their criticism. They argue that, there is no evidence that clearly show the effectiveness of peer review in terms of quality improvement of the published paper. However, peer review remains the most widely used option as opposed to the other alternative approaches. In the year 2002, the American medical Association stated that peer review is the widely used method, untested and its effect uncertain; similarly there are no evidences that peer review is ineffective. Other studies also indicate that peer review is unreliable since only two reviewers are used to support the author’s idea instead of six or even more reviewers. The critics went a head as to time factor concerns. They say that, it takes long time hence wasting their energies and the scarce resources unnecessarily.
Alternative approaches
Peer review like any other method has it alternatives such as double blind review, single blind review, post publication review and open review. Most of the surveys that were conducted showed that the most preferred review was the double blind review. Though most respondent choose double blind review as their preferr...