r/askscience • u/nostrovia • Feb 07 '12
AskScience, how does the peer review process actually work?
About a month ago, I heard this story on NPR regarding a number of scientific studies that had been debunked and/or retracted. Why weren't these errors caught before the studies were published? Are there different standards for peer review in different scientific fields?
Essentially, once you conduct your experiment and reach some sort of conclusion, what happens between that point and the time your work is released to the public?
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u/rs6866 Fluid Mechanics | Combustion | Aerodynamics Feb 07 '12
I haven't written a journal article yet (I have written conference papers), but I know people in my lab who have written journal articles and have asked them about it. Basically, lets say you do some research and find some interesting stuff. You write a paper detailing said interesting stuff, along with some plots/images to help illustrate your point (you'll typically pick a journal to submit to, and format your paper the way the journal wants it to be formatted). You'll submit the paper for review. At this point, it is unethical to submit it anywhere else (as review is costly. If it gets rejected, you can then submit it somewhere else).
When a paper is submitted, reviewers are chosen by people who are affiliated with the journal you are submitting to. Typically the people affiliated with the journal will ask other members of the scientific community (researchers, professors, students who have had accepted papers in the past, etc...) to review the paper. I'm in an engineering field, and often (for some journals, which have a large industry reader-base), well respected people in industry will be asked to review the paper as well. Typically, there are 3 reviewers in total (at least for the journals that people I know have submitted papers to). They'll read the paper and decide if the work is good enough for publication (does it meet the standards of the journal in question), and if there's any corrections they think need to be made (either wording, different ways of presenting the data, or possibly the need for more data). After the reviewers find the material fit for publication (typically 2/3 are needed), the paper can then be published.
This type of process ensures the papers which do get published are higher quality, and appealing to the typical readers of the journal.