After more than 30 years working with scholarly journals, Irene Hames has some thoughts on how to improve peer review. She even wrote a book about it. As the first recipient of the Publons Sentinel Award, Hames spoke to us about the most pressing issues she believes are facing the peer review system — and what should be done about them.
Retraction Watch: At a recent event held as part of this year’s Peer Review Week, you suggested that journals publish their reviews, along with the final paper. Why?
Irene Hames: I don’t think that saying something is ‘peer reviewed’ can any longer be considered a badge of quality or rigour. The quality of peer review varies enormously, ranging from excellent through poor/inadequate to non-existent. But if reviewers’ reports were routinely published alongside articles – ideally with the authors’ responses and editorial decision correspondence – this would provide not only information on the standards of peer review and editorial handling, but also insight into why the decision to publish has been made, the strengths and weaknesses of the work, whether readers should bear reservations in mind, and so on. As I’ve said before, I can’t understand why this can’t become the norm. I haven’t heard any reasons why it shouldn’t, and I’d love the Retraction Watch audience to make suggestions in the comments here. I’m not advocating that the reviewers’ names should appear – I think that’s a decision that should be left to journals and their communities.
Continue reading Make reviews public, says peer review expert
A former postdoc at Emory and Georgetown Universities falsified data in manuscripts and a grant application to the U.S. National Institutes of Health, according to the Office of Research Integrity (ORI) at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
The week at Retraction Watch featured the 
