Peer Review Scam

Nature News: Publishing: The peer-review scam. When a handful of authors were caught reviewing their own papers, it exposed weaknesses in modern publishing systems. Editors are trying to plug the holes. post pdf

The authors survey abuses of peer-review. Reviewer recommendations abused. Plain text passwords stolen. People, journals and systems are named. Strangely I could only find one quotable paragraph, itself a quote.

“As you make the system more technical and more automated, there are more ways to game it,” says Bruce Schneier, a computer-security expert at Harvard Law School's Berkman Center for Internet and Society in Cambridge, Massachusetts. “There are almost never technical solutions to social problems.”

Authors' affiliations? Cat Ferguson, Adam Marcus and Ivan Oransky are the staff writer and two co-founders, respectively, of Retraction Watch in New York City.

selected comments

Lachlan Coin: Academic Karma has built a registry of reviewers with verified ORCID, as well as tools for editors to find and invite reviewers from this registry. Its a fairly new initiative so we would love to get more reviewers signed up and also more editors using our tools to source reviewers. website

Tim Peterson: Onarbor solves many of these peer review issues. It's publishing, reviewing, and funding. Think Kickstarter merged with Stackoverflow. I'm one of its creators so would be grateful if you'd be interested in talking more. website

Andrew Preston: ... We try to help by allowing reviewers to build officially verified records of their past reviews on Publons.com. Editors can then check these profiles before assigning reviews. The goal is benefit all stakeholders but we do see instances where editors decline to take part. website