August 27, 2008

Incompetence Tops List of Complaints About Peer Reviewers

By Jeffrey Brainard

Incompetence by their reviewers was the most common problem reported by scientists who submitted manuscripts to scholarly journals. Almost two-thirds voiced that beef in a survey administered to scientists employed by the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences.

The supposedly expert reviewers, scientists complained, had not carefully read articles, were unfamiliar with the subject matter, or made mistakes of fact or reasoning. The

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