Peer review: the attitudes and behaviours of Covid-19 pandemic-era early career researchers

Abstract

Explores science and social science early career researchers’ (ECRs) perceptions and experiences of peer review, seeking also to identify their views of any pandemic-associated changes that have taken place. Data are drawn from the Harbingers-2 project, which investigated the impact of the pandemic on scholarly communications. Peer review, one of the activities covered, is singled out as it proved to be the activity of greatest concern to ECRs. Findings are obtained from interviews, which covered around 167 ECRs from China, France, Malaysia, Poland, Russia, Spain, UK and US, supplemented by an international survey that took the data out to a bigger and wider audience for confirmation and generalisation. Results obtained are enhanced by comparisons with pre-pandemic evidence yielded by Harbingers-1, the forerunner of the present study, and anchored in an extensive review of the literature. Main findings are: 1) most ECRs were experienced in peer review, both as reviewers and authors, but few had formal training; 2) half the ECRs had a lot or some reservations as to whether peer review vouches for the trustworthiness of research; 3) inadequate reviewers and slow processes were the main peer review associated problems; 4) there was a strong feeling that some kind of compensation, whether monetary or reputational, could help in dealing with these problems; 5) the pandemic impacted most on the speed of processing, with the majority of ECRs saying it had slowed the process; 6) nearly everyone thought that any pandemic-induced impacts would be temporary.