От редактора: Основные принципы научного рецензирования

Abstract

Almost all my editorials were written drawing on the experience of working with authors. The articles examined issues that were considered controversial or challenging for authors. However, this editorial will focus on another important participants of the publication process, i.e. reviewers. Earlier we wrote about the history of peer review and discussed the need of open reviewing (Rushby, 2020), this time I am going to cover key principles of peer review. During a review process a scholarly paper is subject to meticulous analysis from peers who are specialists in the same field as authors. Peer review ensures that articles meet the quality requirements and high standards in a given discipline (Kelly et al., 2014). This process filters out low quality manuscripts (ibid, 2014). There are different peer review methods: open, single-blind, double-blind, public, cascading, and public disclosure (Smart, 2018). Despite this diversity, probably the widely used type is double-blind peer review. It is a model when the identity of authors and reviewers is not disclosed. This anonymity ensures objectivity which is perceived as a great advantage of double-blind review. However, this model can be criticized due to a lack of transparency (Rushby, 2020). Among other disadvantages is long review times (Kelly et al., 2014). Despite these drawbacks, the scientific community is not ready to switch over to alternative models of peer review.