Peer review: still king in the digital age

The article presents one of the main fi ndings 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 There is, though, a common perception that open access journals are not peer reviewed or do not have proper peer-review systems.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 signifi cantly changed the way they decide what to trust. They do not trust social media. Only a minority – although signifi cantly 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 signifi cant 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. Introduction This paper provides a window into a recently completed international project on trust in the scholarly digital environment, conducted for the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation,1 that investigated the views and practices of around 4,000 academic researchers. The formative stages of the project were reported previously in Learned Publishing,2 and here we focus on probably its biggest fi nding: that peer review is not only alive and kicking, but apparently increasing its infl uence, despite the many potential (or invented) threats posed by a rapidly unfolding and enveloping digital environment: threats such as social media, new information behaviours, and the growing number of proxy trust metrics (e.g. impact factors, usage, and altmetrics). When publishers heard about our fi ndings, their typical response was, ‘We could have told you that, so what is new?’ Well, we think what is new and very important is that the digital transition, fl ood, or tsunami, call it what you like, far from burying or signifi cantly changing peer review, has actually empowered and strengthened it. Without peer review there has to be a big question mark over whether researchers could navigate the virtual scholarly world effectively. The implicit trust that comes with peer review is very effective for reducing the complexity of today’s disintermediated, overly abundant scholarly information environment because it enables scholars to come to decisions without fi rst considering every possible eventuality.3,4 It is important to understand why peer review has proved so effective, especially when thousands of academic researchers in the survey questioned its functioning; suggesting that while it is working, it could work better. And, more importantly, perhaps there are divergent voices among some key communities that deserve consideration, and especially those of early career researchers who are the most critical of all. The data reported in this paper come mostly from an international questionnaire survey, which formed the major data collection instrument for the Sloan project. Participants were © David Nicholas, Anthony Watkinson, Hamid R. Jamali, Eti Herman, Carol Tenopir, Rachel Volentine, Suzie Allard, and Kenneth Levine 2015 David Nicholas 16 David Nicholas et al. LEARNED PUBLISHING VOL. 28 NO. 1 JANUARY 2015 recruited by six scholarly publishers who agreed to send an email invitation to authors who had contributed to their journals. The online survey was run between May and July 2013. Participants were asked questions regarding their use of scholarly information and reading habits, dissemination practices, citation practices, and personal demographics. 3,650 researchers responded to the questionnaire, making it one of the biggest surveys of its kind. Focus groups and one-to-one interviews with more than 150 UK and US researchers were used to scope the questionnaire and help frame its questions. Data from the focus groups and interviews are also used in this paper to provide context and explanation for the survey data.