Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-ndw9j Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-10T10:20:14.273Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Peer Reviewing Interdisciplinary Papers

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 May 2010

Marco Pautasso  and
Cesare Pautasso
Marco Pautasso*
Affiliation:
Division of Biology, Imperial College London, Silwood Campus, Ascot SL5 7PY, UK. E-mail: m.pautasso@ic.ac.uk
Cesare Pautasso
Affiliation:
Faculty of Informatics, University of Lugano, Via Buffi 13, 6900 Lugano, Switzerland
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Interdisciplinary research is becoming more frequent because many contemporary issues can only be successfully addressed by integrating different perspectives. One general feature of the various scientific fields is peer review, i.e. the assessment and improvement of submissions to journals, conferences and workshops. Whilst there exist guidelines for the peer review of mono-disciplinary articles and empirical studies of how interdisciplinary research proposals are assessed, there is still a need for a summary of issues specific to the peer review of interdisciplinary research papers. This article provides an overview of relevant questions such as whether reviewers are competent to assess interdisciplinary papers even if unfamiliar with all the involved fields. We discuss the assessment of the interdisciplinarity, soundness, novelty, influence and general interest of interdisciplinary manuscripts. Further issues include the appropriateness of interdisciplinary submissions for journals, keeping the vocabulary of new interdisciplinary fields understandable to the reader and balancing the references across various fields. Constructive interdisciplinary reviewers are likely to be just as open-minded as interdisciplinary scientists and should be rewarded more than they currently are.

Type
Focus: Central and Eastern Europe
Information
European Review , Volume 18 , Issue 2 , May 2010 , pp. 227 - 237
Copyright
Copyright © Academia Europaea 2010

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1.Bruce, A., Lyall, C., Tait, J. and Williams, R. (2004) Interdisciplinary integration in Europe: the case of the Fifth Framework programme. Futures, 36, 457–470. doi:10.1016/j.futures.2003.10.003.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
2.Porter, A. L. and Rafols, I. (2009) Is science becoming more interdisciplinary? Measuring and mapping six research fields over time. Scientometrics, 81, 719–745. doi:10.1007/s11192-008-2197-2.Google Scholar
3.Buanes, A. and Jentoft, S. (2009) Building bridges: institutional perspectives on interdisciplinarity. Futures, 41, 446–454. doi:10.1016/j.futures.2009.01.010.Google Scholar
4.Pohl, C. (2005) Transdisciplinary collaboration in environmental research. Futures, 37, 1159–1178. doi:10.1016/j.futures.2005.02.009.Google Scholar
5.Lawrence, P. A. (2003) The politics of publication – authors, reviewers and editors must act to protect the quality of research. Nature, 422, 259–261. doi:10.1038/422259a.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
6.Forscher, B. K. (1964) Rules for referees. Science, 150, 319–321.Google Scholar
7.Goldbeck-Wood, S. (1998) What makes a good reviewer of manuscripts? British Medical Journal, 316, 86.Google Scholar
8.Hoppin, F. G. (2002) How I review an original scientific article. American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine, 166, 1019–1023. doi:10.1164/rccm.200204-324OE.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
9.Bourne, P. E. and Korngreen, A. (2006) Ten simple rules for reviewers. PLoS Computational Biology, 2, e110. doi:10.1371/journal.pcbi.0020110.Google Scholar
10.Smith, A. J. (1990) The task of the referee. IEEE Computer, 23, 46–51.Google Scholar
11.Provenzale, J. M. and Stanley, R. J. (2005) A systematic guide to reviewing a manuscript. American Journal of Radiology, 185, 848–854. doi:10.2214/AJR.05.0782.Google ScholarPubMed
12.Laudel, G. (2006) Conclave in the Tower of Babel: how peers review interdisciplinary research proposals. Research Evaluation, 15, 57–68.Google Scholar
13.Mansilla, V. B. (2006) Assessing expert interdisciplinary work at the frontier: an empirical exploration. Research Evaluation, 15, 17–29.Google Scholar
14.Lee, C. (2006) Perspective: peer review of interdisciplinary scientific papers. Nature, online debate on peer review, doi:10.1038/nature05034.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
15.Rosenbaum, P. (2005) On the value of being a journal reviewer. Developmental Medicine & Child Neurology, 47, 147doi:10.1017/S0012162205000265.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
16.De Schutter, E. (2008) Reviewing multi-disciplinary papers: a challenge in neuroscience? Neuroinformatics, 6, 253–255. doi:10.1007/s12021-008-9034-x.Google Scholar
17.Lasater, K., Ray, A. L., Driever, M. J., Rosenfeld, A. and Bradley, K. J. (2008) Creating international conference submission and review guidelines to facilitate transnational dialogue. The Journal of Continuing Education in Nursing, 39, 473–479.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
18.Klein, J. T. (2006) Afterword: the emergent literature on interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary research evaluation. Research Evaluation, 15, 75–80.Google Scholar
19.Ramadier, T. (2004) Transdisciplinarity and its challenges: the case of urban studies. Futures, 36, 423–439. doi:10.1016/j.futures.2003.10.009.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
20.Booth, D. A. (2008) Appetite: peer-reviewed research across the disciplines. Appetite, 51, 231–232. doi:10.1016/j.appet.2008.04.005.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
21.Klein, J. T. (2008) Evaluation of interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary research. A literature review. American Journal of Preventive Medicine, 35, S116–S123. doi:10.1016/j.amepre.2008.05.010.Google Scholar
22.Hochberg, M. E., Chase, J. M., Gotelli, N. J., Hastings, A. and Naeem, S. (2009) The tragedy of the reviewer commons. Ecology Letters, 12, 2–4. doi:10.1111/j.1461-0248.2008.01276.x.Google Scholar
23.Müller, H. M., Kenny, E. E. and Sternberg, P. W. (2004) Textpresso: an ontology-based information retrieval and extraction system for biological literature. PLoS Biology, 2, 1984–1988. doi:10.1371/journal.pbio.0020309.Google Scholar
24.Müller, H. M., Rangarajan, R., Teal, T. K. and Sternberg, P. W. (2008) Textpresso for neuroscience: searching the full text of thousands of neuroscience research papers. Neuroinformatics, 6, 195–204. doi:10.1007/s12021-008-9031-0.Google Scholar
25.Fink, J. L., Kushch, S., Williams, P. R. and Bourne, P. E. (2008) BioLit: integrating biological literature with databases. Nucleic Acids Research, 36, W385–W389. doi:10.1093/nar/gkn317.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
26.Errami, M., Sun, Z. H., Long, T. C., George, A. C. and Garner, H. R. (2009) Deja vu: a database of highly similar citations in the scientific literature. Nucleic Acids Research, 37, 921–924. doi:10.1093/nar/gkn546.Google Scholar
27.Lawrence, D. W. and Laflamme, L. (2009) Using online databases to find journal articles on injury prevention and safety promotion topics: how do SafetyLit subscribers use other databases? Safety Science, 47, 1–8. doi:10.1016/j.ssci.2008.01.004.Google Scholar
28.Lufrano, F. and Staiti, P. (2009) A bibliometric analysis of the international literature in supercapacitors. International Journal of Electrochemical Science, 4, 173–186.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
29.Valkimadi, P. E., Karageorgopoulos, D. E., Vliagoftis, H. and Falagas, M. E. (2009) Increasing dominance of English in publications archived by PubMed. Scientometrics, 81, 219–223. doi:10.1007/s11192-008-2139-z.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
30.Begg, C. B. and Berlin, J. A. (1988) Publication bias: a problem in interpreting medical data. Journal of the Royal Statistical Society Series A, 151, 419–463.Google Scholar
31.Easterbrook, P. J., Berlin, J. A., Gopalan, R. and Matthews, D. R. (1991) Publication bias in clinical research. Lancet, 337, 867–872.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
32.Jasienski, M. (2009) Garfield’s demon and ‘surprising’ or ‘unexpected’ results in science. Scientometrics, 78, 347–353. doi:10.1007/s11192-007-1979-2.Google Scholar
33.Fry, G. L. A. (2001) Multifunctional landscapes – towards transdisciplinary research. Landscape and Urban Planning, 57, 159–168. doi:10.1016/S0169-2046(01)00201-8.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
34.Hauser, M. and Fehr, E. (2007) An incentive solution to the peer review problem. PLoS Biology, 5, e107. doi:10.1371/journal.pbio.0050107.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
35.Imboden, D. (2009) Scientific publishing: the dilemma of research funding organizations. European Review, 17, 23–31. doi:10.1017/S1062798709000544.Google Scholar
36.Weaire, D. (2007) Time for a rethink of research proposal evaluation? European Review, 15, 275–282. doi:10.1017/S1062798707000300.CrossRefGoogle Scholar