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Peer review: still king in the digital age
Author(s) -
NICHOLAS David,
WATKINSON Anthony,
JAMALI Hamid R.,
HERMAN Eti,
TENOPIR Carol,
VOLENTINE Rachel,
ALLARD Suzie,
LEVINE Kenneth
Publication year - 2015
Publication title -
learned publishing
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.06
H-Index - 34
eISSN - 1741-4857
pISSN - 0953-1513
DOI - 10.1087/20150104
Subject(s) - trustworthiness , publishing , reading (process) , perception , peer review , internet privacy , social media , scholarly communication , public relations , psychology , computer science , world wide web , political science , law , neuroscience
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 There is, though, a common perception that open access journals are not peer reviewed or do not have proper peer‐review systems.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.