Peer Review

What is Peer Review?: The process of subjecting a piece of research to independent scrutiny by other psychologists working in similar field who consider the research in terms of its validity, significance and originality.

1) It's difficult for reasecher to spot mistakes in their own piece of work. Therefore, by showing the work to others increases the possibablity that weakness will be identified and addressed.       

2) It help to pervent plagiarism.

3) It ensures that published research can be taken seriously because it’s been independently scrutinised by fellow researchers.

4) It helps prevent research finding that are not valid being put into the public domain. It helps avoids deliberate fraud or personal views being published. Therefore, it is an important part of the scientific process.  

1) Values in science: work or research that agrees with cultural, political or peer values, are more likley to be favoured.

2) Anonymity:  is usually practised so reviewers can be honest & objective, but sometimes they hide behind the veil of anonymity to settle old scores against rivals.

3) Preserving the status quo: work that does not ‘fit in’ can be rejected.

4) File drawer phenomena:research accepting the null hypothesis does not get published or gets left in researcher’s file drawer. Can distort our understanding of a phenomenon.

5) Bias in peer review: individual ,institutional or gender bias can lead to acceptance or rejection.

6) Unachievable ideal: Cannot always find an expert to review the research – so it may be passed because the reviewer didn’t understand it.