The role and significance of peer-review in Russian and foreign library and information science journals: a comparative analysis

Abstract

The paper summarizes experience of the authors as peer-reviewers of more than 100 manuscripts in twelve Russian and foreign academic journals on Library and Information Science in the last seven years. Prepared peer-reviews were used for making a list of the most usual critical and special comments for each manuscript that were subsequently structured for the conducted analyzes. Typical issues accompanying the peer-review process are shown. Significant differences between the results of peer-review in Russian and foreign journals are detected: although the initial quality of newly submitted manuscripts is approximately equal, the final published versions in foreign journals addressed all critical and the majority of minor reviewers’ comments, while in Russian journals more than one third of final versions were published with critical gaps. We conclude about low interest in high quality peer reviews among both authors and editors-in-chief in Russian journals. Despite the limitations of the samples, the obtained findings can be useful when evaluating the current peer-review system in Russian academic journals on Library and Information Science.