Peer Review Outcomes Research Articles

Updated risk assessment concerning the risk to wild mammals for the active substance gamma-cyhalothrin.

The risk assessment for gamma‐cyhalothrin in light of confirmatory data requested following approval in accordance with Article 6(1) of Directive 91/414/EEC and Article 6(f) of Regulation (EC) No 1107/2009 concluded that the long‐term risk to wild mammals from the proposed representative uses of gamma‐cyhalothrin was not fully addressed. Following further considerations during the decision‐making process, the European Commission asked EFSA to update the risk assessment for wild mammals and consider a restriction to the proposed good agricultural practice (GAP). The outcome of the updated peer review of the risk assessment for wild mammals is presented.

Gender and Geographic Origin as Determinants of Manuscript Publication Outcomes: JBMR® Bibliometric Analysis from 2017 to 2019.

The Journal of Bone and Mineral Research (JBMR®), the flagship journal of the American Society for Bone and Mineral Research (ASBMR), enjoys a premiere position in its field and has a global reach. The journal uses a single-blind peer-review process whereby three editors are typically involved in assessing each submission for publication, in addition to external reviewers. Although emphasizing fairness, rigor, and transparency, this process is not immune to the influence of unconscious biases. The gender and geographic diversity of JBMR® authors, editors, and reviewers has increased over the last three decades, but whether such diversity has affected peer-review outcomes is unknown. We analyzed manuscript acceptance rates based on the gender and geographic origin of authors, reviewers, and Associate Editors. The analysis included 1662 original research articles submitted to JBMR® from September 2017 through December 2019. Gender was assigned using probabilities from an online tool and manually validated through internet searches. Predictor variables of manuscript outcome were determined with multivariate logistic regression analysis. The acceptance rate was highest when the first and last authors were of different genders, and lowest when both authors were men. Reviewer gender did not influence the outcome regardless of the genders of the first and last authors. Associate Editors from all geographical regions tended to select reviewers from their same region. The acceptance rate was highest when the Associate Editor was from Europe. Manuscripts with authors from North America and Australia/New Zealand had greater overall odds of acceptance than those from Europe and Asia. Manuscripts reviewed only by Editorial Board (EB) members had a lower acceptance rate than those refereed by non-EB reviewers or a mix of EB and non-EB reviewers. Overall, the geographical origin of authors, reviewers, and editors, as well as reviewers' EB membership may influence manuscript decisions. Yet, the JBMR® peer-review process remains largely free from gender bias. © 2022 American Society for Bone and Mineral Research (ASBMR).

Structure and Processes of Existing Practice in Radiotherapy Peer Review: A Systematic Review of the Literature

Peer review in radiotherapy is an essential step in clinical quality assurance to avoid planning-related errors that can impact on patient safety and treatment outcomes. Despite recommendations that radiotherapy centres should include peer review in their regular quality assurance pathway, adoption of the practice has not been universal, and to date there have been no formal guidelines set out to standardise the process. We undertook a systematic review of the literature to determine existing practice in radiotherapy peer review internationally, with respect to meeting structure and processes, in order to define a standardised framework. A PubMed and Web of Science search identified 17 articles detailing peer review practice. The results revealed significant variation in peer review processes between institutions, and a lack of consensus on documentation and reporting. Variations in the grading of outcomes of peer review were also noted. Taking into account the results of this review, a framework for standardising the process and outcome documentation for peer review has been developed. This can be utilised by radiotherapy centres introducing or updating peer review practice, and can facilitate meaningful evaluation of the clinical impact of peer review in the future.

373 Emergency Physicians Can Safely Treat and Release Selected Influenza, Pneumonia and Pyelonephritis Patients With Sepsis

Some patients (pts) with “sepsis”, as classically defined, are nonetheless “treated and released” (Tx/Rel) from the emergency department (ED). [“Sepsis” means at least 2 “SIRS” criteria with an infectious diagnosis (dx)]. Careful ED physicians (EDPs) probably use “physician gestalt” to identify septic pts for this strategy. Prior peer-reviewed outcomes studies of septic pts have included only those hospitalized. Thus, no peer-reviewed literature exists to support an ED “Tx/Rel” strategy for any septic pts. We tested the hypothesis that the 95% CI for 7-day (d) mortality of septic pts Tx/Rel from the ED with a dx of pneumonia (PNEU), influenza (INF) pyelonephritis (PYELO), Urinary Tract Infection (UTI) or undifferentiated sepsis (SEP) includes 0%. We tracked the short term outcomes (STO) of 7-d & 30-d mortality, & 7-d & 30-d returns for ED care. Search of the Social Security Death Index verified a lack of short-term (<30 d) mortality among pts who did not return to our ED for any subsequent care. SIRS scores, not qSOFA scores, plus one of these 5 infectious dx, were used to identify the study group with sepsis, because qSOFA score is a prognostic tool, validated in an Intensive Care Unit (ICU) setting, & because a valid prognostic study requires all pts to have a correct dx upon study entry. Thus, qSOFA is a tool unsuitable for identifying septic pts in the ED, because: 1) Use of qSOFA for diagnostic purposes would require “circular reasoning” & 2) An ED environment differs from ICUs where qSOFA was validated. *Between 1/1/2017 and 12/31/2018, 2677 patients were Tx/Rel from a busy tertiary hospital ED (2018 pt volume 59,788) with a dx of PNEU, INFL, PYELO, UTI or SEP. Of these, 1067 patients were “SIRS-positive” at ED arrival. *The 7-d and 30-d mortality of these 1067 pts was zero (95% CI 0-0.28%). Thus, these pts were safely Tx/Rel. 4/1067 returned to the ED within 30d for an unrelated reason. 17/1067 returned with a chief complaint (CC) apparently related to the 1st visit, but without evidence of decline of clinical status; 13/17 within 7d. All 17 were again Tx/Rel. 23/1067 pts returned to the ED within 30d due to evidence of decline or failure to improve as expected, of whom 1 returned beyond 7d. All 23 had a change in the therapeutic plan implemented, such as administration of oxygen and/or change of antibiotic. 13/23 were admitted to hospital at time of the 2nd ED visit, none to an ICU, & 12/13 within 7d. 10/23 were again Tx/Rel. Characteristics (Age, Sex, Dx, SIRS & qSOFA scores of those 23 with objective evidence of need to return to the ED will be presented at the Forum. Only 9/1067 SIRS+ pts had initial qSOFA scores of 2 or 3. ED physicians can safely Tx/Rel selected septic patients, apparently via “physician gestalt,” with very low risk of short-term mortality. Occasionally, septic pts Tx/Rel from an ED will deteriorate or fail to improve after discharge, demonstrating a need for clear “ED return precautions.”

Peer review versus the h-index for evaluation of individual researchers in the biological sciences

Past performance is a key consideration when rationalising the allocation of grants and other opportunities to individual researchers. The National Research Foundation of South Africa (NRF) has long used a highly structured system of ‘rating’ the past performance of individual researchers. This system relies heavily on peer review, and has seldom been benchmarked against bibliometric measures of research performance such as Hirsch’s h-index. Here I use data for about 600 rated researchers in the biological sciences to evaluate the extent to which outcomes of peer review correspond to bibliometric measures of research performance. The analysis revealed that values of the h-index based on the Scopus database are typically 5–20 for researchers placed in the NRF’s C rating category (‘established’), 20–40 for those in the B rating category (‘considerable international recognition’) and &gt;40 for those in the A rating category (‘leading international scholars’). Despite concerns that citation patterns differ among disciplines, the mean h-index per rating category was remarkably consistent across five different disciplines in the biological sciences, namely animal sciences, plant sciences, ecology, microbiology and biochemistry/genetics. This observation suggests that the NRF rating system is equitable in the sense that the outcomes of peer review are generally consistent with bibliometric measures of research performance across different disciplines in the biological sciences. However, the study did reveal some notable discrepancies which could reflect either bias in the peer-review process or shortcomings in the bibliometric measures, or both.&#x0D; Significance:&#x0D; &#x0D; NRF rating categorisations (estimates of standing in a research field based on peer review) are a reasonably good predictor of the h-index of individual researchers in the biological sciences.&#x0D; The relationships between rating categorisations and the h-index are remarkably consistent across five sub-disciplines in the biological sciences.&#x0D; Peer review and the h-index were compared in terms of their relative advantages and disadvantages and the combined use of both approaches is advocated for measurement of research performance.&#x0D;

The ACM SIGSOFT Paper and Peer Review Quality Initiative

Scholarly peer review is crucial to science: it not only determines what is published where, but also, indirectly, who is hired, funded and promoted. Yet, virtually every academic has peer review horror stories. Empirical evidence suggests that "peer review is prejudiced, capricious, inefficient, ineffective, and generally unscientific" [1]. An experiment at a major machine learning conference found that peer review was unreliable highlighted that the outcome of peer review can be very noisy [2, 3]. In May 2019, ACM SIGSOFT launched an initiative to improve the quality of research papers and peer reviews at software engineering venues. It has two main components: empirical standards and recommendations for improving review processes.

Outcome of the pesticides peer review meeting on general recurring issues in mammalian toxicology

The technical report reflects the outcome of the discussion during the mammalian toxicology experts’ meeting on general recurring issues,which took place in Parma in October 2019. The issues discussed and identified during the EFSA peer review of pesticide active substances under Regulation (EC) No 1107/2009 were mainly related to: the assessment of substances with endocrine disrupting properties, the assessment of impurities, isomers and metabolites, the genotoxicity of mixtures,the use of in silico methods for the assessment of genotoxicity and the use of the benchmark dose instead of the NOAEL. In addition, EFSA provided an update of the ongoing activities such as the in vitro metabolism, dermal absorption and developmental neurotoxicity.

The Learning Method of Peer Review in College English Writing Course

Peer review is an important teaching method of writing. College English has a large vocabulary, complex situations and high degree of specialization, which are difficult points in teaching. Through peer review, students can benefit a lot, such as enhancing interest in college English reading and writing through the exchange of reading and evaluation, enhancing initiative in writing and improving their abilities to identify errors and appreciate English articles. In this paper, the applications of the learning method of peer review in college English teaching were investigated, and it was found that teacher’s behavior, time arrangement and student’s behavior were all particularly important and needed to be arranged in a scientific way. On the other hand, a student-oriented teaching model of “trinity” was also presented, which covered three target elements: ability, knowledge and education. In this paper, a fuzzy comprehensive evaluation method was used to evaluate the learning outcomes of peer review, and an evaluation indicator system for students’ learning ability and the weights thereof were established. According to the actual situation of the evaluated objects, four evaluation grades were selected, that is, excellent, good, fair and poor. Our teaching experiment showed that through this learning model, students have improved their English writing ability and reading comprehension ability to a certain degree, as well as their self-learning ability, which is beneficial to the consolidation of their learning effect.

Unprofessional peer reviews disproportionately harm underrepresented groups in STEM.

BackgroundPeer reviewed research is paramount to the advancement of science. Ideally, the peer review process is an unbiased, fair assessment of the scientific merit and credibility of a study; however, well-documented biases arise in all methods of peer review. Systemic biases have been shown to directly impact the outcomes of peer review, yet little is known about the downstream impacts of unprofessional reviewer comments that are shared with authors.MethodsIn an anonymous survey of international participants in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields, we investigated the pervasiveness and author perceptions of long-term implications of receiving of unprofessional comments. Specifically, we assessed authors’ perceptions of scientific aptitude, productivity, and career trajectory after receiving an unprofessional peer review.ResultsWe show that survey respondents across four intersecting categories of gender and race/ethnicity received unprofessional peer review comments equally. However, traditionally underrepresented groups in STEM fields were most likely to perceive negative impacts on scientific aptitude, productivity, and career advancement after receiving an unprofessional peer review.DiscussionStudies show that a negative perception of aptitude leads to lowered self-confidence, short-term disruptions in success and productivity and delays in career advancement. Therefore, our results indicate that unprofessional reviews likely have and will continue to perpetuate the gap in STEM fields for traditionally underrepresented groups in the sciences.

Engagement in peer review, learner-content interaction and learning outcomes

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to propose a reciprocal peer review approach that resembled the scholarly peer review process using the Moodle e-learning system. The authors investigated interrelations among engagement in providing peer feedback, engagement in responding to peer feedback, learner-content interaction and learning outcomes. Design/methodology/approach An experimental intervention study was designed. A total of 45 students who enroled in an undergraduate research methods course completed the assigned project. Reciprocal peer review was adopted, in which the participants provided a peer review report on a randomly assigned peer’s research proposal. Subsequently, participants revised and submitted their proposal along with a response letter that highlighted the revisions. Findings This study highlights that the engagement in providing peer feedback exerts an indirect effect on learning outcomes through learner-content interaction. Learner-content interaction fully mediates the causal relationship between engagement in providing peer feedback and learning outcomes. Practical implications Learner-content interaction fully mediates the causal relationship between engagement in providing peer feedback and learning outcomes. Thus, e-learning practitioners who engage in peer review should first construct high-quality course materials to enhance learning outcomes. Originality/value Learning outcomes can be enhanced if there is a high level of engagement in providing peer feedback among learners. However, learner-content interaction fully mediates the positive effect of engagement in providing peer feedback on learning outcomes. Furthermore, engagement in providing peer feedback will enhance the learner’s motivation to intensify his or her learning from the course material.

Updated peer review concerning the risk to mammals and bees for the active substance indoxacarb.

Following the completion of the pesticides peer review process in the context of the renewal of the approval of indoxacarb in accordance with Commission Implementing Regulation (EU) No 844/2012, EFSA identified critical areas of concern in the area of ecotoxicology, however no expert discussion on that section was held during the renewal process. Following further considerations during the decision‐making process, the European Commission asked EFSA to discuss the risk assessment for herbivorous mammals and the risk to bees in an expert meeting and provide a Statement on the outcome of the updated peer review. The critical areas of concern identified in the renewal process as regards the long‐term risk for mammals, earthworm‐eating mammals and for honeybees are retained.

A NOVEL PREDICTION MODEL FOR RESPIRATORY FAILURE AFTER CARDIAC REVASCULARIZATION SURGERIES

SESSION TITLE: Wednesday Abstract Posters SESSION TYPE: Original Investigation Posters PRESENTED ON: 10/23/2019 09:45 AM - 10:45 AM PURPOSE: Machine learning techniques are used in application fraud protection for over 30 years. It has been used for medical outcomes for 10 years for prediction of clinical medical outcomes in clinical outcomes over the last decade. Researchers have developed algorithms for detection of clinical outcome but the clinical significant is uncertain. Respiratory Failure (RF) after revascularization surgery is associated with significant morbidity/mortality, increased length of stay, and readmissions. Few reports have evaluated the risk factors for RF, and no prediction model is available. We used data mining and machine learning techniques to stratify the risk factors and build a model to predict RF using NIS database, and test the predictive ability of the model. METHODS: Data was obtained from National Inpatient Sample (NIS), the first three quarters of 2015 were considered to establish the learning model. We used the R programming language and SQLite to extract data for all patients that underwent cardiac revascularization surgeries; we identified 27103 patients, 5035 of which developed RF in their hospital stay. We identified the most common diagnoses that were recorded in the database before RF using routine algorithmic techniques. These diagnoses were stratified and using Support Vector Machines and Random Forests, a predictive model was built to predict RF. Given that the data was unbalanced (∼20% develop RF), Synthetic Minority Over-sampling was used to increase the sensitivity of the predictive model. RESULTS: Our model identified more than 60 diagnoses that had statistically significant correlation with RF. The only type of revascularization that had significant impact on RF was single IMA bypass, which was protective. We chose 20 most impactful (highest odd ratio), among which were number of chronic disease, kidney failure, sepsis, elective vs. emergent, Hypokalemia, and obesity, to build our learning model using the techniques described. We tested our first run of the model had accuracy of 90%, sensitivity of 64% and specificity of 99%. Given that we felt in this case, sensitivity is the most important factor, we identified another model using minority oversampling, with sensitivity of 95%, but it came at the cost of decreasing specificity to 92%. CONCLUSIONS: The novelty of this technique is using machine learning to build a predictive model for RF in patients undergoing revascularization surgery. The advantage of this learning method is that the predictive accuracy increases with the size of training sample. We believe that if more years are incorporated in our learning model, the accuracy, sensitivity, and specificity will increase. Furthermore, with more granular identifiers (e.g. potassium level instead of hypokalemia), the predictive ability will improve. CLINICAL IMPLICATIONS: Such techniques can be used in quality patient care and peer review outcomes measures for coding and reimbursement. DISCLOSURES: No relevant relationships by Siavash Bolourani, source=Web Response No relevant relationships by Frank Manetta, source=Web Response No relevant relationships by Alexandra Renzi, source=Web Response No relevant relationships by Ping Wang, source=Admin input

Current and novel practice of stereotactic radiosurgery.

Stereotactic radiosurgery emerged as a neurosurgical discipline in order to utilize energy for the manipulation of brain or nerve tissue, with the goal of minimal access and safe and effective care of a spectrum of neurosurgical disorders. Perhaps no other branch of neurosurgery has been so disruptive across the entire discipline of brain tumor care, treatment of vascular disorders, and management of functional problems. Radiosurgery is mainstream, supported by thousands of peer-reviewed outcomes reports. This article reviews current practice with a focus on challenges, emerging trends, and areas of investigation.

Taking a Detour from a Journey

The trend of managerialism and neo-liberalism sweeping across universities demands peer-reviewed outcomes, which replace discourses of ‘service.’ Within this context I, a racialized immigrant faculty member from the global South, ventured on a journey as an Associate Director, Student Affairs. I realized that I needed to take a detour, as my commitment to service was competing with the expectation of meeting the ever-growing number of peer-reviewed outcomes. The situation reminded me of my previous experiences with the university administration around ‘service.’ Based on my subjectivities I had no choice other than to ‘comply’ with the discourse of managerialism and neo-liberalism. I gave up ‘service’ as an academic administrator to pursue research and publication. My decision raises questions about the fairness of similar compliance by other racialized, new immigrant academics. Using critical auto-ethnography, I challenge the current managerial and neo-liberal

Editors Should Declare Conflicts of Interest

Editors have increasing pressure as scholarly publishing tries to shore up trust and reassure academics and the public that traditional peer review is robust, fail-safe, and corrective. Hidden conflicts of interest (COIs) may skew the fairness of the publishing process because they could allow the status of personal or professional relationships to positively influence the outcome of peer review or reduce the processing period of this process. Not all authors have such privileged relationships. In academic journals, editors usually have very specialized skills and are selected as agents of trust, entrusted with the responsibility of serving as quality control gate-keepers during peer review. In many cases, editors form extensive networks, either with other professionals, industry, academic bodies, journals, or publishers. Such networks and relationships may influence their decisions or even their subjectivity towards a set of submitting authors, paper, or institute, ultimately influencing the peer review process. These positions and relationships are not simply aspects of a curriculum, they are potential COIs. Thus, on the editorial board of all academic journals, editors should carry a COI statement that reflects their past history, as well as actual relationships and positions that they have, as these may influence their editorial functions.

Outcome of the pesticides peer review meeting on general recurring issues in physical and chemical properties and analytical methods

Outcome of the pesticides peer review meeting on general recurring issues in physical and chemical properties and analytical methods

Systematic analysis of agreement between metrics and peer review in the UK REF

When performing a national research assessment, some countries rely on citation metrics whereas others, such as the UK, primarily use peer review. In the influential Metric Tide report, a low agreement between metrics and peer review in the UK Research Excellence Framework (REF) was found. However, earlier studies observed much higher agreement between metrics and peer review in the REF and argued in favour of using metrics. This shows that there is considerable ambiguity in the discussion on agreement between metrics and peer review. We provide clarity in this discussion by considering four important points: (1) the level of aggregation of the analysis; (2) the use of either a size-dependent or a size-independent perspective; (3) the suitability of different measures of agreement; and (4) the uncertainty in peer review. In the context of the REF, we argue that agreement between metrics and peer review should be assessed at the institutional level rather than at the publication level. Both a size-dependent and a size-independent perspective are relevant in the REF. The interpretation of correlations may be problematic and as an alternative we therefore use measures of agreement that are based on the absolute or relative differences between metrics and peer review. To get an idea of the uncertainty in peer review, we rely on a model to bootstrap peer review outcomes. We conclude that particularly in Physics, Clinical Medicine, and Public Health, metrics agree relatively well with peer review and may offer an alternative to peer review.

Gender differences in peer review outcomes and manuscript impact at six journals of ecology and evolution.

The productivity and performance of men is generally rated more highly than that of women in controlled experiments, suggesting conscious or unconscious gender biases in assessment. The degree to which editors and reviewers of scholarly journals exhibit gender biases that influence outcomes of the peer‐review process remains uncertain due to substantial variation among studies. We test whether gender predicts the outcomes of editorial and peer review for >23,000 research manuscripts submitted to six journals in ecology and evolution from 2010 to 2015. Papers with female and male first authors were equally likely to be sent for peer review. However, papers with female first authors obtained, on average, slightly worse peer‐review scores and were more likely to be rejected after peer review, though the difference varied among journals. These gender differences appear to be partly due to differences in authorial roles. Papers for the which the first author deferred corresponding authorship to a coauthor (which women do more often than men) obtained significantly worse peer‐review scores and were less likely to get positive editorial decisions. Gender differences in corresponding authorship explained some of the gender differences in peer‐review scores and positive editorial decisions. In contrast to these observations on submitted manuscripts, gender differences in peer‐review outcomes were observed in a survey of >12,000 published manuscripts; women reported similar rates of rejection (from a prior journal) before eventual publication. After publication, papers with female authors were cited less often than those with male authors, though the differences are very small (~2%). Our data do not allow us to test hypotheses about mechanisms underlying the gender discrepancies we observed, but strongly support the conclusion that papers authored by women have lower acceptance rates and are less well cited than are papers authored by men in ecology.

Evaluation of confirmatory data following the Article 12 MRL review for flutolanil.

The applicant Nihon Nohyaku Co. Ltd. submitted a request to the competent national authority in Finland to evaluate the confirmatory data that were identified for flutolanil in the framework of the maximum residue level (MRL) review under Article 12 of Regulation (EC) No 396/2005 as not available. The data gaps related to new residue trials for globe artichokes and beans with pods and for storage stability data in products of animal origin were addressed. Further risk management consideration is required regarding the tentative MRL on peppers and on certain products of animal origin, since the data gaps identified in the MRL review were not addressed or only partially addressed. A new metabolism study on ruminants was provided which will be assessed in the framework of the renewal of the active substance flutolanil; formally, this data gap is considered to be addressed. EFSA updated the most recent consumer risk assessment for flutolanil and concluded that the long‐term dietary intake is unlikely to present a risk to consumer health. The conclusion reported in this reasoned opinion may need to be reconsidered in light of the outcome of the EU pesticides peer review.

The First North American Clinical Gamma Knife Center.

A decision to develop a stereotactic radiosurgery center and install the first 201 cobalt-60 Gamma Knife in Pittsburgh was made in 1981 after gathering regional and leadership support. This was part of a 7-year quest that required overcoming barriers to a new technology unfamiliar to US regulatory authorities and insurance companies. The first patient was treated in August 1987. Since that time our center has installed each succeeding Gamma Knife device developed. During an initial 30-year experience we performed more than 14,750 patient procedures. In addition to patient care our Center's goal was to develop a major teaching and clinical research program that eventually led to the training of more than 2,500 physicians and medical physicists, the publication of more than 600 peer-reviewed clinical outcome research studies, and 4 books. This report summarizes the rationale for acquisition, the challenges and the early years, and then the evolution of our center which installed the first US 201 source Gamma Knife.