Peer Review: An Introduction and Guide
Peer Review: An Introduction and Guide (by Mark Ware, published by the Publishing Research Consortium, September 2013) offers a readable overview of the processes used in peer review that assesses its strengths and limitations and looks at alternative approaches that are now being developed and trialled. Ware discusses why, although inevitably imperfect, peer review remains a vital element of scholarship and the means by which the quality benchmark that distinguishes scholarly discourse is established. The Guide describes the elements that make up the peer review process, the workflows and tracking systems, the issues around publication ethics, and the developments in post-publication review and altmetrics that may represent the direction peer review will take in the future. The reader of this short Guide will be left with a coherent and forward-looking insight into the processes, the shortcomings and the innovations around peer review, and a deeper understanding of why peer review is such an enduring factor in the research process. |