Peer Review

Higher Education Institutions and Research Organizations

In colleges, universities, and independent research institutions, peer review is often a required internal gatekeeping process through which research proposals must successfully pass before investigators submit proposed research projects to ethics review boards or external funding sources. Points of focus in this internal review include the project's significance and methodological integrity (i.e., does the project have the potential to contribute to the identified body of knowledge or applied or clinical area, is the research question clearly articulated, is the research design appropriate to the question being investigated, are the participants clearly identified, are the methods adequately described and logically cohere, and are ethical concerns identified and addressed?). These internal peer reviews are conducted by faculty members, researchers, and others with the expertise and knowledge to render decisions of quality and to offer improvements. Outcomes include approval for external submission, guidance for a revision and resubmission, or the project's dismissal.

Grant and Trust Funding

Peer review is often the preferred method for judging a proposal's merits and rigor for research funding and for deciding how best to allocate scarce public or private resources. Whether conducted by an individual or by groups sometimes called panel reviews or review committees, peer review for governmental and private foundation and trust funding focuses on the proposed project's significance and methodological integrity. In addition, a peer reviewer is required to give special attention to assessing a researcher's potential to complete the proposed project (e.g., past performance with funded projects, availability of critical resources, and institutional support) and whether or not funds should be allocated to underwrite the proposed activities. Individuals conducting these peer reviews may be selected based upon their published body of work, including a record of successfully securing their own research funding or some other set of criteria demonstrating their expertise in judging the quality of and potential for investigators' success in completing their proposed research projects. Outcomes include the awarding of funding, a revise and resubmit scenario, or rejection.

Scholarly Publications

Peer review is considered the highest and most rigorous form of editorial review in determining the publication merits of papers, chapters, and books. With scholarly or academic journals, editors and their boards of reviewers (referees) serve as the major gatekeepers for judging what texts are deemed to be of the highest quality and significance and therefore worthy of publication. To ensure the greater independence of the peer reviewing process, some editors also combine peer review with what is called blind review, in which the referees do not know the identities of the authors and the other reviewers and the authors do not know the identities of the reviewers. Journal referees are selected based upon their scholarly record and their content and/or methodological knowledge of the paper or work to be reviewed. Another important function of editorial peer review is the mentoring process through which editors help authors learn how to improve their papers. Outcomes include acceptance of the submission, revisions and resubmissions, or declination of the paper.

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