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What does it mean when a publication is peer reviewed?
A peer-reviewed publication is also sometimes referred to as a scholarly publication. The peer-review process subjects an author's scholarly work, research, or ideas to the scrutiny of others who are experts in the same field (peers) and is considered necessary to ensure academic scientific quality.
Learn more: Fundamental Science Practices: Peer Review
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USGS-authored or produced data and information are considered to be in the U.S. public domain and can be freely used without permission. All we ask is that you acknowledge the USGS as the source. While the content of most USGS webpages is in the U.S. public domain, not all information, illustrations, or photographs on our site are. Some non-USGS photographs, images, and/or graphics that appear on...
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All USGS-authored publications (whether published internally or externally) receive a minimum of two peer reviews, a supervisory review, and final clearance by a Bureau approving official to ensure that all related USGS and federal policies have been followed. Additional reviews might also be needed, including editorial review by the USGS Science Publishing Network (required for all USGS...
When/Why does the USGS publish research results in outside journals that require a fee to access rather than in the USGS publication series?
Publishing in outside journals by USGS scientists allows the research—including its scientific and practical contributions—to be disseminated to others in a particular field. This makes scientific researchers and practitioners with similar interests aware of new knowledge in their field, and it helps to advance knowledge and its application. USGS scientists publish in both free open-access...
History of U.S. Geological Survey scientific peer review and approval, 1879–2019
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What is peer review? What is a peer-reviewed journal?
Peer-reviewed (or refereed) journals.
Peer-reviewed or refereed journals have an editorial board of subject experts who review and evaluate submitted articles before accepting them for publication. A journal may be a scholarly journal but not a peer-reviewed journal.
Peer review (or referee) process
- An editorial board asks subject experts to review and evaluate submitted articles before accepting them for publication in a scholarly journal.
- Submissions are evaluated using criteria including the excellence, novelty and significance of the research or ideas.
- Scholarly journals use this process to protect and maintain the quality of material they publish.
- Members of the editorial board are listed near the beginning of each journal issue.
How to tell if a journal is peer-reviewed
- If you are searching for scholarly or peer-reviewed articles in a database , you may be able to limit your results to peer-reviewed articles.
- If you're looking at the journal itself, search for references to their peer-review process, such as in an editorial statement, or a section with instructions to authors.
- You can also search for your journal title in Ulrichsweb (a directory of periodicals worldwide, previously called Ulrichs], which includes basic information about each publication, including whether it is peer-reviewed/refereed.
For an overview of the different types of journals, see What is a scholarly (or peer-reviewed) journal?
What are Peer-Reviewed Journals?
- A Definition of Peer-Reviewed
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- 5 ways to tell if an articles is peer-reviewed From Prairie State College Library
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- What are Peer-reviewed Articles and How Do I Find Them? From Capella University Libraries
Introduction
Peer-reviewed journals (also called scholarly or refereed journals) are a key information source for your college papers and projects. They are written by scholars for scholars and are an reliable source for information on a topic or discipline. These journals can be found either in the library's online databases, or in the library's local holdings. This guide will help you identify whether a journal is peer-reviewed and show you tips on finding them.
What is Peer-Review?
Peer-review is a process where an article is verified by a group of scholars before it is published.
When an author submits an article to a peer-reviewed journal, the editor passes out the article to a group of scholars in the related field (the author's peers). They review the article, making sure that its sources are reliable, the information it presents is consistent with the research, etc. Only after they give the article their "okay" is it published.
The peer-review process makes sure that only quality research is published: research that will further the scholarly work in the field.
When you use articles from peer-reviewed journals, someone has already reviewed the article and said that it is reliable, so you don't have to take the steps to evaluate the author or his/her sources. The hard work is already done for you!
Identifying Peer-Review Journals
If you have the physical journal, you can look for the following features to identify if it is peer-reviewed.
Masthead (The first few pages) : includes information on the submission process, the editorial board, and maybe even a phrase stating that the journal is "peer-reviewed."
Publisher: Peer-reviewed journals are typically published by professional organizations or associations (like the American Chemical Society). They also may be affiliated with colleges/universities.
Graphics: Typically there either won't be any images at all, or the few charts/graphs are only there to supplement the text information. They are usually in black and white.
Authors: The authors are listed at the beginning of the article, usually with information on their affiliated institutions, or contact information like email addresses.
Abstracts: At the beginning of the article the authors provide an extensive abstract detailing their research and any conclusions they were able to draw.
Terminology: Since the articles are written by scholars for scholars, they use uncommon terminology specific to their field and typically do not define the words used.
Citations: At the end of each article is a list of citations/reference. These are provided for scholars to either double check their work, or to help scholars who are researching in the same general area.
Advertisements: Peer-reviewed journals rarely have advertisements. If they do the ads are for professional organizations or conferences, not for national products.
Identifying Articles from Databases
When you are looking at an article in an online database, identifying that it comes from a peer-reviewed journal can be more difficult. You do not have access to the physical journal to check areas like the masthead or advertisements, but you can use some of the same basic principles.
Points you may want to keep in mind when you are evaluating an article from a database:
- A lot of databases provide you with the option to limit your results to only those from peer-reviewed or refereed journals. Choosing this option means all of your results will be from those types of sources.
- When possible, choose the PDF version of the article's full text. Since this is exactly as if you photocopied from the journal, you can get a better idea of its layout, graphics, advertisements, etc.
- Even in an online database you still should be able to check for author information, abstracts, terminology, and citations.
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How to recognize peer-reviewed (refereed) journals.
In many cases professors will require that students utilize articles from “peer-reviewed” journals. Sometimes the phrases “refereed journals” or “scholarly journals” are used to describe the same type of journals. But what are peer-reviewed (or refereed or scholarly) journal articles, and why do faculty require their use?
Three categories of information resources:
- Newspapers and magazines containing news - Articles are written by reporters who may or may not be experts in the field of the article. Consequently, articles may contain incorrect information.
- Journals containing articles written by academics and/or professionals — Although the articles are written by “experts,” any particular “expert” may have some ideas that are really “out there!”
- Peer-reviewed (refereed or scholarly) journals - Articles are written by experts and are reviewed by several other experts in the field before the article is published in the journal in order to ensure the article’s quality. (The article is more likely to be scientifically valid, reach reasonable conclusions, etc.) In most cases the reviewers do not know who the author of the article is, so that the article succeeds or fails on its own merit, not the reputation of the expert.
Helpful hint!
Not all information in a peer-reviewed journal is actually refereed, or reviewed. For example, editorials, letters to the editor, book reviews, and other types of information don’t count as articles, and may not be accepted by your professor.
How do you determine whether an article qualifies as being a peer-reviewed journal article?
First, you need to be able to identify which journals are peer-reviewed. There are generally four methods for doing this
- Limiting a database search to peer-reviewed journals only. Some databases allow you to limit searches for articles to peer reviewed journals only. For example, Academic Search Complete has this feature on the initial search screen - click on the pertinent box to limit the search. In some databases you may have to go to an “advanced” or “expert” search screen to do this. Remember, many databases do not allow you to limit your search in this way.
- Locate the journal in the Library or online, then identify the most current entire year’s issues.
- Locate the masthead of the publication. This oftentimes consists of a box towards either the front or the end of the periodical, and contains publication information such as the editors of the journal, the publisher, the place of publication, the subscription cost and similar information.
- Does the journal say that it is peer-reviewed? If so, you’re done! If not, move on to step d.
- Check in and around the masthead to locate the method for submitting articles to the publication. If you find information similar to “to submit articles, send three copies…”, the journal is probably peer-reviewed. In this case, you are inferring that the publication is then going to send the multiple copies of the article to the journal’s reviewers. This may not always be the case, so relying upon this criterion alone may prove inaccurate.
- If you do not see this type of statement in the first issue of the journal that you look at, examine the remaining journals to see if this information is included. Sometimes publications will include this information in only a single issue a year.
- Is it scholarly, using technical terminology? Does the article format approximate the following - abstract, literature review, methodology, results, conclusion, and references? Are the articles written by scholarly researchers in the field that the periodical pertains to? Is advertising non-existent, or kept to a minimum? Are there references listed in footnotes or bibliographies? If you answered yes to all these questions , the journal may very well be peer-reviewed. This determination would be strengthened by having met the previous criterion of a multiple-copies submission requirement. If you answered these questions no , the journal is probably not peer-reviewed.
- Find the official web site on the internet, and check to see if it states that the journal is peer-reviewed. Be careful to use the official site (often located at the journal publisher’s web site), and, even then, information could potentially be “inaccurate.”
If you have used the previous four methods in trying to determine if an article is from a peer-reviewed journal and are still unsure, speak to your instructor.
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Q. What does "peer reviewed" mean?
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Answered By: Priscilla Coulter Last Updated: Jul 29, 2022 Views: 261417
Essentially, peer review is an academic term for quality control . Each article published in a peer-reviewed journal was closely examined by a panel of reviewers who are experts on the article's topic (that is, the author’s professional peers…hence the term peer review). The reviewers assess the author’s proper use of research methods, the significance of the paper’s contribution to the existing literature, and check on the authors’ works on the topic in any discussions or mentions in citations. Papers published in these journals are expert-approved…and the most authoritative sources of information for college-level research papers.
Articles from popula r publications, on the other hand (like magazines, newspapers, or many sites on the Internet), are published with minimal editing (for spelling and grammar, perhaps; but, typically not for factual accuracy or intellectual integrity). While interesting to read, these articles aren’t sufficient to support research at an academic level.
But, with so many articles out there, how do you know which are peer-reviewed?
- Searching the library’s databases can save you a lot of time …allowing you to limit your search to scholarly or peer-reviewed articles only . Most internet search engines (like Google and Yahoo) can’t do this for you, leaving you to determine for yourself which of those thousands of articles are peer-reviewed.
- If you’ve already found an article that you’d like to use in a research paper, but you’re not sure if it’s popular or scholarly, there are ways to tell. The table below lists some of the most obvious clues (but your librarians will be happy to help you figure it out as well).
See also: What does "scholarly" mean? Is it the same as "peer-reviewed?"
Need a visual? Watch this quick video from the North Carolina State University Libraries:
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What is peer review?
From a publisher’s perspective, peer review functions as a filter for content, directing better quality articles to better quality journals and so creating journal brands.
Running articles through the process of peer review adds value to them. For this reason publishers need to make sure that peer review is robust.
Editor Feedback
"Pointing out the specifics about flaws in the paper’s structure is paramount. Are methods valid, is data clearly presented, and are conclusions supported by data?” (Editor feedback)
“If an editor can read your comments and understand clearly the basis for your recommendation, then you have written a helpful review.” (Editor feedback)
Peer Review at Its Best
What peer review does best is improve the quality of published papers by motivating authors to submit good quality work – and helping to improve that work through the peer review process.
In fact, 90% of researchers feel that peer review improves the quality of their published paper (University of Tennessee and CIBER Research Ltd, 2013).
What the Critics Say
The peer review system is not without criticism. Studies show that even after peer review, some articles still contain inaccuracies and demonstrate that most rejected papers will go on to be published somewhere else.
However, these criticisms should be understood within the context of peer review as a human activity. The occasional errors of peer review are not reasons for abandoning the process altogether – the mistakes would be worse without it.
Improving Effectiveness
Some of the ways in which Wiley is seeking to improve the efficiency of the process, include:
- Reducing the amount of repeat reviewing by innovating around transferable peer review
- Providing training and best practice guidance to peer reviewers
- Improving recognition of the contribution made by reviewers
Visit our Peer Review Process and Types of Peer Review pages for additional detailed information on peer review.
Transparency in Peer Review
Wiley is committed to increasing transparency in peer review, increasing accountability for the peer review process and giving recognition to the work of peer reviewers and editors. We are also actively exploring other peer review models to give researchers the options that suit them and their communities.
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Peer-reviewed literature
Peer-reviewed journal articles have gone through an evaluation process in which journal editors and other expert scholars critically assess the quality and scientific merit of the article and its research. Articles that pass this process are published in the peer-reviewed literature. Peer-reviewed journals may include the research of scholars who have collected their own data using an experimental study design, survey, or various other study methodologies. They also present the work of researchers who have performed novel analyses of existing data sources, such as the ones described in this section.
Peer-reviewed literature is accessible via academic databases that enable users to execute searches across multiple journals.
Academic Databases for the Health and Biomedical Sciences
- MEDLINE (PubMed)
- CINAHL (Cumulative Index to Nursing & Allied Health Literature) (EBSCOHost)
- ScienceDirect
- Health Business Fulltext Elite (EBSCOHost )
- PSYCInfo , American Psychological Association
Leading Health- and Health Care-related Journals
- The New England Journal of Medicine
- Health Affairs
- Epidemiologic Reviews
- American Journal of Public Health
- The Milbank Quarterly
- Medical Care
Benefits of Peer-Reviewed Literature
- Peer-review process ensures that the quality of the research and validity of the findings are high
- Information on highly-detailed subject matter and complex analyses
- Easy to search through millions of articles with online databases
Limitations of Peer-Reviewed Literature
- Highly-detailed and complex analyses may be irrelevant for users who are simply searching for descriptive statistics and basic measures of public health
- May require a subscription to journals or databases to access articles (can be costly for individuals, although many universities and other organizations provide access to students and faculty)
Previous Section Next Section
Evaluating Information Sources: What Is A Peer-Reviewed Article?
- Should I Trust Internet Sources?
What Is A Peer-Reviewed Article?
Anali Perry, a librarian from Arizona State University Libraries, gives a quick definition of a peer-reviewed article.
The Library Minute: Academic Articles from ASU Libraries on Vimeo .
How Do Peer-Reviewed Articles Differ From Popular Ones?
This 3 minute video from the Peabody Library at Vanderbilt University talks about the differences between popular and scholarly articles. It also mentions trade publications.
What Is Peer Review?
In academic publishing, the goal of peer review is to assess the quality of articles submitted for publication in a scholarly journal. Before an article is deemed appropriate to be published in a peer-reviewed journal, it must undergo the following process:
- The author of the article must submit it to the journal editor who forwards the article to experts in the field. Because the reviewers specialize in the same scholarly area as the author, they are considered the author’s peers (hence “peer review”).
- These impartial reviewers are charged with carefully evaluating the quality of the submitted manuscript.
- The peer reviewers check the manuscript for accuracy and assess the validity of the research methodology and procedures.
- If appropriate, they suggest revisions. If they find the article lacking in scholarly validity and rigor, they reject it.
Because a peer-reviewed journal will not publish articles that fail to meet the standards established for a given discipline, peer-reviewed articles that are accepted for publication exemplify the best research practices in a field.
Features of a Peer-Reviewed Article
When you are determining whether or not the article you found is a peer-reviewed article, you should consider the following.
Does the article have the following features?
Also consider...
- Is the journal in which you found the article published or sponsored by a professional scholarly society, professional association, or university academic department? Does it describe itself as a peer-reviewed publication? (To know that, check the journal's website).
- Did you find a citation for it in one of the databases that includes scholarly publications? (Academic Search Complete, PsycINFO, etc.)? Read the database description to see if it includes scholarly publications.
- In the database, did you limit your search to scholarly or peer-reviewed publications? (See video tutorial below for a demonstration.)
- Is the topic of the article narrowly focused and explored in depth ?
- Is the article based on either original research or authorities in the field (as opposed to personal opinion)?
- Is the article written for readers with some prior knowledge of the subject?
- If your field is social or natural science, is the article divided into sections with headings such as those listed below?
How Do I Find Peer-Reviewed Articles?
The easiest and fastest way to find peer-reviewed articles is to search the online library databases , many of which include peer-reviewed journals. To make sure your results come from peer-reviewed (also called "scholarly" or "academic") journals, do the following:
- Read the database description to determine if it features peer-reviewed articles.
- When you search for articles, choose the Advanced Search option. On the search screen, look for a check-box that allows you to limit your results to peer-reviewed only.
- If you didn't check off the "peer-reviewed articles only" box, try to see if your results can organized by source . For example, the database Criminal Justice Abstracts will let you choose the tab "Peer-Reviewed Journals."
Video tutorial
Watch this video through to the end. It will show you how to use a library database and how to narrow your search results down to just peer-reviewed articles.
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What are peer reviewed journals?
- Definition of "peer reviewed"
Peer reviewed journals refer to scholarly journals that have their articles reviewed by peers before their publication. A peer reviewed article is a work that has been thoroughly assessed by an expert in the field, and based on its quality has been accepted to be published in a scholarly journal. The aim of peer reviewing is to publish articles that meet the standards established in each field. This way, peer reviewed articles that are published can be taken as models of research practices.
To be able to recognize such articles, take a look at our guide How to know if an article is peer reviewed .
- Peer review process
Each work submitted for peer review has to undergo the following process to be published:
- The article must be submitted to a journal.
- The journal assigns the article to an expert in the field, who is considered the “peer”.
- The peer carefully examines the work, and checks the accuracy of the methodology and other processes.
- If deemed appropriate, the peer recommends more revisions.
- If the work proves to have a good quality, it is published. If it doesn’t meet the field’s standards, it’s rejected.
- Types of peer review
Over time, different types of peer review have emerged. Here is a concise description of the most common types of peer review:
- Single blind review: the names of the reviewers are hidden from the author. This is the most traditional and common method of peer reviewing
- Double blind review: both the names of reviewer and the author are hidden from each other.
- Triple-blind review: the reviewers’ and author’s names are hidden from each other.
- Open review: this is a term that refers to multiple peer review models that have the goal of achieving full transparency during and after the peer review process. For example, when the reviewer and author know each other during the reviewing process.
- Further reading
🧭 How to recognize peer-reviewed (refereed) journals
📠 Evaluating Information Sources: What Is A Peer-Reviewed Article?
🧨 The Peer Review Process
- Frequently Asked Questions about peer reviewed journals
A peer reviewed article refers to a work that has been thoroughly assessed, and based on its quality has been accepted to be published in a scholarly journal.
Once an article has been submitted for publication to a peer reviewed journal, the journal assigns the article to an expert in the field, who is considered the “peer”.
The easiest way to find a peer reviewed article is to narrow down the search in the "Advanced search" option. Then, mark the box that says "peer reviewed".
The best source for peer reviewed journals is the Web of Science Master Journal List, available at: https://mjl.clarivate.com/search-results
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What's a peer-reviewed journal article?
And how you can find peer-reviewed journals for your first research paper
Did you just get assigned your first research paper and are wondering about the requirement to use “peer-reviewed” or “scholarly” journal articles?
You’re not alone. I worked as an intern for a while at my university’s library, and I still remember the day a first-year student came up to the reference desk, handed me a piece of paper with the words “scholarly journals” on it, and asked where she could find them.
It’s an easy mistake to think you can just go to a section of the library, find some academic journals, and then look through them to find scholarly articles for a paper. These days, though, libraries are subscribing to fewer and fewer print journals, so you’ll usually be looking through a database instead. Before we get to that, though, what exactly are "peer-reviewed" journals anyway?
What does “peer-reviewed” mean?
A peer-reviewed journal is a journal article that has been selected, reviewed, and then approved for publication by other experts in the author’s field. Often the peer-review process is “double-blind”. This means that the reviewers don’t know the identity of the author and vice versa. Usually, there will be two or three reviewers. The reviewers will make comments and suggest corrections to the author, and the editor of the journal will then look at whether or not the author responded to these changes when deciding if the article should be published. This process can be very time-consuming but is designed to ensure the utmost quality of the published articles.
Where can you find peer-reviewed articles?
If, like the student in my story above, you are looking for peer-reviewed articles for the first time, how can you find them?
First, go to your library website. Many university libraries have a search portal on their website that searches both the library catalog and databases at the same time. If your library has this type of portal, just enter the search terms for your paper, and you’re likely to find a lot of items you have access to.
If your library doesn’t have a search portal for all library resources, it will usually have a “Databases” link. If Databases are listed by subject area, choose the subject area that fits best for your paper topic. If you’re not sure which subject area applies or if your topic is interdisciplinary in nature, use a database like EBSCO’s “Academic Search”. Some databases have an Advanced Search feature that lets you limit results to peer-reviewed journal articles. Other databases might have a filter that lets you narrow down your results to only keep those that are peer-reviewed. Keep an eye out for features like this.
Next, especially if the database you searched doesn’t have an option to limit results to peer-reviewed articles, check what type of sources you’ve found. An article might seem like it’s from a peer-reviewed journal but then turn out to be from a non-scholarly source such as a newspaper or magazine instead. Also, just because you found an article in a database and it’s from an academic journal, doesn’t mean it’s a peer-reviewed article! Book reviews or editorials, for example, are not peer-reviewed.
As mentioned above, most of the peer-reviewed articles you find will be online in a database. Since many students also have the requirement to not use any Internet sources for their first paper, this is understandably confusing, since databases are only accessible online. However, peer-reviewed journal articles found in a database are academic sources, and you don’t need to worry if you use them. If you’re ever unsure, just ask your professor or teaching assistant.
Are pre-prints peer-reviewed? And what are pre-prints anyway?
To make things even more confusing, in your database searches you might sometimes find an article that’s designated with one of the following terms: “pre-print publication”, “working paper”, “online first”, or “Epub ahead of print”. All of these designations mean that an article has not yet completed the entire publication process and appeared in the print edition of a journal. However, if you see “pre-print”, “preprint” or “working paper”, it usually means that the article has not gone through the peer-review process.
The Life Sciences, Mathematics, and the Physical Sciences tend to use pre-prints more frequently than other disciplines. The main reason is to get feedback before submitting to a journal, lay claim to the results before anyone else does, and to share results more quickly so that they can be used by other researchers.
If you see “online first “or “Epub ahead of print” in an article database, it usually means that the article has been accepted and gone through peer review. The article is just waiting to be published in the print edition of the journal. These types of articles are known as "postprints".
Can you cite a pre-print in your first research paper? If your requirements are to cite only peer-reviewed articles, you shouldn’t cite a pre-print since it hasn’t gone through the peer-review process. You can however cite a postprint, as long as you designate it accordingly. To add a postprint to Citavi, right-click the Year field and then select In press . Enter the article’s date in the Online since field. The citation style you select will then automatically insert the correct designation.
Before you submit your paper, check to see if the article has appeared in print in the meantime. You can do so by clicking the DOI name field label and then selecting Replace bibliographic information . If you now see entries in the volume, year, and issue number fields, the article has been published. Make sure to double-check that anything you cited is still current in the published version of the article.
Peer-reviewed journal articles in Citavi
Once you’ve found peer-reviewed articles online, it’s easy to transfer them to Citavi. But what about if you’re using Citavi’s online search feature and don’t have filters to help you determine which articles are peer-reviewed and which aren’t?
We recommend importing the results that look interesting and then assigning them the Examine and assess task. Then, at some point before obtaining the full text for the article, go through all references in your project with this task and try to evaluate whether the article is peer-reviewed or not:
- First, double-check that the source is a journal article. Many journals have the word “Journal” as part of their title, but many do not. The best indication is that the Volume field will have an entry, but pre-prints and some journal articles won’t have this information. A DOI is also a good indication that you’re looking at a journal article, even though DOIs are sometimes also used for conference papers. If you see a full date or a month and year instead of just a year, and if the article is only one or two pages long, you likely have a newspaper article or magazine article instead of a journal article.
- Next, on the Reference tab, check if there is any source designation in the Title supplement or Notes If you see “Journal Article” or something similar, you’re on the right track, but you also might see “Letter to the editor”, “Letter”, “Editorial” “Book review”, etc., which are not peer-reviewed.
- Finally, switch to the Content tab and read the abstract if one is available. Does the article appear to contain an experiment or original analysis by the author(s) themselves? Original research often appears in peer-reviewed journals, so this is one additional clue that it could be a peer-reviewed article.
This process will help you weed out sources that very likely are not peer-reviewed, but in some cases you’ll only know for sure after obtaining the full text of the article. On the first or last page of the PDF, you'll often see some information about the publishing process the paper has undergone, for example "Received for publication Dec 13, 2017; revisions received Jan 18, 2019; accepted for publication February 26, 2019".
If you’re ever still unsure if an article has undergone peer review, ask your librarian for help. Librarians are experts in distinguishing different types of sources.
Are there any problems with peer-review?
In 2018 three people purposefully submitted fake journal articles to peer-reviewed journals to see if they could get them published. Astonishingly, 7 out of 20 journal articles were accepted for publication. The journals that published the fake papers have since retracted them.
The hoax was widely reported in the media and has led to many discussions of peer review both inside and outside of academia. Although the authors’ purported goal was to point out the flaws in scholarship practices in certain cultural studies disciplines that they named “grievance studies”, the hoax also showed that peer-review is not a perfect system.
While this news story is one of the biggest concerning peer review, researchers within academia have long pointed out that the system doesn’t guard against statistical fraud or conclusions based on fraudulent data , since reviewers usually don’t have access to the authors’ data sets. Furthermore, some journals let authors submit names of potential reviewers, and it’s been discovered that authors have used fake email addresses or names and then reviewed their own work.
Do these problems mean that we should just scrap the peer review process altogether? There are many people who do indeed want to reform the process, and a number of initiatives such as open peer review have been suggested, which would remove reviewer anonymity.
Even if changes to the system never gain wide acceptance, it’s important to keep in mind that abuses of the system occur in a very small percentage of all published papers. While peer-review can undoubtedly be improved in some ways, on the whole it has proven to be a very good system for ensuring that only quality academic work gets published.
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Some of the causes of peer pressure include parental neglect, fear of being ridiculed and low self esteem. Anyone that crumbles in the face of peer pressure is likely to get involved in unbecoming behavior and activities.
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