For most researchers, having an article accepted comes with constructive feedback from editors and reviewers. But when a sociology researcher learned his article was accepted at a Taylor & Francis journal, he was surprised to find the journal had skipped the peer review process altogether.
Martino C. submitted his article on the effects of economic instability on political ideology in Slovakia to the journal Democracy and Security on October 15. (We’ve withheld the author’s last name at his request for digital privacy reasons.) He told Retraction Watch he was hoping peer reviews would help him improve his argument.
But on January 13, the paper was marked “Accepted” in the journal’s submission portal without feedback.
While most journals require peer review, some have developed unconventional approaches, such as eLife, which publishes all manuscripts it sends to reviewers. Taylor & Francis, which publishes Democracy and Security, requires all articles in its journals be reviewed by at least two independent experts.
“I feel that accepting a manuscript without revisions undermines the scientific process, which in the social sciences is not always particularly stringent already,” Martino said.
The journal’s editor-in-chief, Arie Perliger, a professor of criminology at the University of Massachusetts Lowell, told us the journal accidentally marked the manuscript as accepted.
“What I find unprofessional is that the author decided to submit clearly under-prepared [manuscript] and waste the time of an editorial team who mostly do it as a voluntary work,” Perliger said.
After realizing the article had been accepted, assigned a DOI, but not peer-reviewed, Martino asked to withdraw his article. “After being contacted multiple times, neither the editor nor the journal manager was able to produce any evidence that peer reviews were conducted,” he wrote in a Feb. 10 email to the journal.
Perliger noted the journal has seen an “exponential” increase in submissions recently, from roughly a dozen a month to more than 100. He noted only three members of the 16-person editorial team assist with the peer-review process.
The “honest mistakes of overworked small teams” are “exactly the reasons people avoid uncompensated service to the field,” he said.
According to the journal’s website, Democracy and Security is “the authoritative source for rigorous exploration of the mechanisms and policies utilized by democracies to deal with security challenges, as well as relevant moral, social, and political dilemmas.” The journal has two retractions in our database from one researcher for plagiarism, as we wrote in 2017.
A representative from Taylor & Francis told us the publisher is working with the journal to “identify what further support they require in order to uphold quality and integrity standards.” The spokesperson said they would contact Martino directly regarding his request to withdraw the article, which at publication time was still marked as “Accepted” in the journal’s submission system.
“I had thought that a Taylor & Francis journal, even if not highly ranked, would take peer review seriously,” Martino said. “I saw it as a suitable venue for a paper presenting a finding that I consider interesting, even if it is not groundbreaking.”
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