Quality & Peer Review. Again.
March 10, 2011The House of Commons Science & Technology Select Committee are holding an inquiry into Peer Review.
Like previous investigations, they focus on peer review as a vehicle for quality assurance and scientific discourse, rather than starting with what they want and working backwards. As peer review occurs after the work has been done, it simply cannot be used to assure quality of the work – although it may be used to assure quality of the published paper…
Instead the government could develop the quality controls already being introduced by academic institutions, and use these to assure the quality we would like to see in studies used to inform policy.
Today I submitted a short paper to the inquiry saying this in more detail:
(Word doc, about 3 pages in large type, with a few minor language corrections from the submitted document)
From timheyes:
I couldn’t find the right place to post this on the BS forum peer review posts but I thought you’d like it.
http://www.scribd.com/doc/18773744/How-to-Publish-a-Scientific-Comment-in-1-2-3-Easy-Steps