Peer review: still king in the digital age
Abstract
The article presents one of the main findings of an international study of 4,000 academic researchers that examined how trustworthiness is determined in the digital environment when it comes to scholarly reading, citing, and publishing. The study shows that peer review is still the most trustworthy characteristic of all. There is, though, a common perception that open access journals are not peer reviewed or do not have proper peer‐review systems. Researchers appear to have moved inexorably from a print‐based system to a digital system, but it has not significantly changed the way they decide what to trust. They do not trust social media. Only a minority – although significantly mostly young and early career researchers – thought that social media are anything other than more appropriate to personal interactions and peripheral to their professional/academic lives. There are other significant differences, according to the age of the researcher. Thus, in regard to choosing an outlet for publication of their work, young researchers are much less concerned with the fact that it is peer reviewed.
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Articles in this review were limited to those published in peer-reviewed journals due to their general trustworthiness in academia and the rigorous review processes undertaken.
“Whilst there are concerns about peer-review processes within the scientific community (e.g., Smith, 2006), articles in this review were limited to those published in peer-reviewed journals, due to their general trustworthiness in academia and the rigorous review processes undertaken (Nicholas et al., 2015).”
From Systematic review of research on artificial intelligence applications in higher education – where are the educators? (2019) · cites this paper as Nicholas et al., 2015
Cites
On-line trust: concepts, evolving themes, a model
Corritore, C. L., Kracher, B., & Wiedenbeck, S. (2003) · International Journal of Human-Computer Studies · doi:10.1016/s1071-5819(03)00041-7 · Cited by 1,200 · see citing works
Do Altmetrics Work? Twitter and Ten Other Social Web Services
Thelwall, M., Haustein, S., Larivière, V., & Sugimoto, C. R. (2013) · PLoS ONE · doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0064841 · Cited by 907 · see citing works
Flagged first, then by citations
Cited by
Sorted by citations
Zawacki-Richter, O., Marín, V. I., Bond, M., & Gouverneur, F. (2019) · International Journal of Educational Technology in Higher Education · doi:10.1186/s41239-019-0171-0 · Cited by 7,242 · see citing works
Bond, M., Buntins, K., Bedenlier, S., Zawacki-Richter, O., & Kerres, M. (2020) · International Journal of Educational Technology in Higher Education · doi:10.1186/s41239-019-0176-8 · Cited by 1,097 · see citing works
“…were limited to those published in peer-reviewed journals, due to the rigorous process under which they are published, and their trustworthiness in academia (Nicholas et al., 2015), although concerns within the scientific community with the peer-review process are acknowledged e.g. ( Smith, 2006).”
BackgroundDuration and quality of the peer review process: the author’s perspective
Huisman, J., & Smits, J. (2017) · Scientometrics · doi:10.1007/s11192-017-2310-5 · Cited by 303 · see citing works
Using ChatGPT in academic writing is (not) a form of plagiarism: What does the literature say?
Jarrah, A. M., Wardat, Y., & Fidalgo, P. (2023) · Online Journal of Communication and Media Technologies · doi:10.30935/ojcmt/13572 · Cited by 220 · see citing works
Exploring the ethical considerations of using Chat GPT in university education
Huallpa, E. A. (2023) · Periodicals of Engineering and Natural Sciences (PEN) · doi:10.21533/pen.v11i4.3770 · Cited by 145 · see citing works
Overburdening of peer reviewers: a multi-stakeholder perspective on causes and effects
Severin, A., & Chataway, J. (2021) · Learned Publishing · doi:10.1002/leap.1392 · Cited by 73 · see citing works
How to improve scientific peer review: four schools of thought
Waltman, L., Kaltenbrunner, W., Pinfield, S., & Woods, H. B. (2023) · Learned Publishing · doi:10.1002/leap.1544 · Cited by 71 · see citing works
Mollaki, V. (2024) · Research Ethics · doi:10.1177/17470161231224552 · Cited by 64 · see citing works
“Peer review not only plays a main role in the scholarly communication; it also facilitates quality control and integrity of scientific research (Guston, 2007; Rennie 2003), even in the digital age (Nicholas et al., 2015).”
Background
- Authors
- NICHOLAS, D., WATKINSON, A., JAMALI, H. R., HERMAN, E., TENOPIR, C., VOLENTINE, R., ALLARD, S., & LEVINE, K.
- Affiliations
- National Research Tomsk State University (RU)
- Centro de Investigación Biomédica en Red (ES)
- University of Tennessee at Knoxville (US)
- University of Tennessee System (US)
- Corresponding author
- NICHOLAS, David
- WATKINSON, Anthony
- JAMALI, Hamid R.
- HERMAN, Eti
- TENOPIR, Carol
- VOLENTINE, Rachel
- ALLARD, Suzie
- LEVINE, Kenneth
- ORCID
- Venue
- Learned Publishing
- Publisher
- Wiley
- Published
- 2015-01
- Volume
- 28
- Issue
- 1
- Pages
- 15-21
- ISSN
- 0953-1513 (ISSN-L)
- 1741-4857
- OpenAlex
- W2079468833
- Cited by
- 242
- References
- 2
- Citations by year
- 2026: 13 · 2025: 15 · 2024: 22 · 2023: 29 · 2022: 10 · 2021: 24 · 2020: 24 · 2019: 46 · 2018: 16 · 2017: 14 · 2016: 19 · 2015: 10
- FWCI
- 93.99
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- Learned Publishing (publishedVersion)
- Funders
- Tomsk State University
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Arts and Humanities › History and Philosophy of Science › Publishing and Scholarly Communication
- Social Sciences › Decision Sciences › Information Systems and Management › Academic Publishing and Open Access
- Social Sciences › Decision Sciences › Statistics, Probability and Uncertainty › scientometrics and bibliometrics research
- Keywords
- peer review, trustworthiness, scholarly publishing, open access journals, social media, early-career researchers, researcher perceptions, digital scholarly communication
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