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(Volume: 3, Issue: 1)
Illicitly Bypassing Journal’s Peer Review- What Returns Back?
In the current five to six years, the major talk theme among the research community is all about ‘PAPER RETRACTIONS’. Paper retractions denote the removal of a published article from its own journal publisher, owing to fake research, plagiarised contents and similar other illegal means of article publication. The number of articles being retracted have grown tremendously and it has grabbed attention as the renowned journal publishers like IEEE, Springer, Elsevier and Wiley itself have retracted about 400, 107, 26 and 1200 research articles, respectively, in various years between 2017 and 2023 and the main reason is “Compromised Peer Review Process”. So, what is compromised peer review and why people go behind illicit bypassing of review? In what ways, the journals’ peer review process has been bypassed by the retracted articles? What are the serious consequences arising from it? How can bypassing the journal’s peer review be eliminated?
Let’s have a glimpse on it...
The compromised peer review and its causes
Compromised peer review process refers to the process of easing up the publication of a research article in a journal, without undergoing the journal’s complete peer review procedures and failing to be compliant with the journal’s ethical policies or standards. This illicit bypassing of the journal’s peer review process happens due to certain reasons and they are:
It is normally time-consuming to get the article published in refereed journals because of the rigorous peer review procedures and policies being adopted in the journal
The researchers lack knowledge that this time consumption is just a period to ensure their research quality, trustworthiness and integrity
The researcher’s intense desire for a faster publication to accomplish academic or career advancements in a short run
Institutions or funding agencies, which pressure up the researchers for a publication in a stipulated time
The researchers lack confidence to counteract the negative comments from peer review, which actually improves the quality of research
The authors lack knowledge on the importance of peer review process and underestimate that the journal’s ability in retracting published articles
Ways of illicit bypassing peer review
It is a known fact that the articles from refereed journals are retracted mainly because of compromised peer review process. There are certain ways with which this compromise was made and they are:
Researchers opting for predatory journals, which perceives only the money in researcher’s hand for faster publication and not his/ her research quality
Providing fake names and email addresses to an illicit reviewer, who blindly accepts the article with the same details for publication
Providing better research findings than previously accepted research manually, without performing proper experimental or testing procedures, in an effect to prove their research supremacy
Providing reviewers of own choice, who will certainly provide acceptance with fewer and simpler review comments
Consequences of illicit bypassing the peer review
The compromised peer- review process will certainly end up in serious consequences, which shall affect the research and the researcher itself.
Consequences on research:
Quality research is replaced with wasteful research findings
Loss of research integrity
An illicitly peer-reviewed and published article will be of no interest to the scientific article reading community and the upcoming researchers
Consequences on researcher:
The researcher lacks meaningful and complete knowledge on his/ her own research
The researcher lacks the way of being got informed of current research findings, which are relevant to his/ her research
The researcher lacks a way to improve his/ her research quality, as finding solutions to the comments given by the expert panel in the journal’s peer review system has a great impact on research quality
Loss of credibility among the research community that the scholar’s reputation will be totally damaged upon article retraction
Career advancements will be a question
Ways to stop journal peer review bypassing
Analysing the compromised peer review process, its causes and the consequences on the research/ researcher, it is very clear that the researcher can only stop this issue by taking the following measures.
· Pre-plan your research and submit the research article to journals, estimating the time it takes for publication before the stipulated research tenure
· Stay away from predatory journals
· Choose reputed journals indexed in databases like, Web of Science, Scopus or PubMed, which has credible expert panel records
· Stay away from unethical means of publishing. Instead, explain the true nature of publication and maintain transparency with the academic institution to extend your research period
Hence, The Research Seer’s Rationale on “Illicitly Bypassing Journal’s Peer Review- What Returns Back?” is:
“Bypassing Journal’s Peer Review Bestows Loss of Credibility, Quality Research & Prideful Publication”
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