Peer Review Week
Jan 17th
The latest global Peer Review Week, “Quality on Peer review,” occurred September 16-20, 2019. The Peer Review week Homepage is here. The Homepage explains:
“WHAT IS PEER REVIEW WEEK?
Peer Review Week is a global event celebrating the essential role that peer review plays in maintaining scientific quality. The event brings together individuals, institutions, and organizations committed to sharing the central message that good peer review, whatever shape or form it might take, is critical to scholarly communications. We organize virtual and in-person events, webinars, interviews and social media activities.
WHY PEER REVIEW WEEK?
- To emphasize the central role peer review plays is scholarly communication
“A plea for consistency, transparency, and reproducibility in risk assessment effect models”
Dec 20th
Valery E. Forbes, Amlie Shmolke, Chiara Accolla, and Volker Grimm authored the above-captioned article, which was published in the Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry. It reads in part as follows:
“Ecological risk assessments (ERAs) are moving toward using populations and ecosystem services as explicit protection goals, and impacts on these goals are difficult, if not impossible, to measure empirically. Mechanistic effect models are recognized as necessary tools for ERA that complement empirical data (National Research Council 2013; European Food Safety Authority 2014), but we need a strategy to make them consistent, transparent, and reproducible following principles similar to those used to develop standardized experimental designs for empirical tests, while recognizing that the models should be allowed to evolve as understanding, data availability, and ERA questions change over time.
“Ghostwriting Peer Reviews”
Nov 17th
Editor’s note: Inside Higher Ed posted the above-titled article by Colleen Flaherty. It reads as follows:
“It’s considered extremely bad form — or misconduct — for a professor to take credit for a graduate student’s or postdoctoral researcher’s work. And yet this happens commonly within the peer-review process, according to a new study in eLife.
The study, which is based on an online survey of about 500 early-career researchers concentrated in the life sciences, found that nearly half of respondents had ghostwritten a review for an invited reviewer, typically a faculty adviser. Three-quarters of respondents had engaged in what the authors say is the much more honest and beneficial process of co-reviewing articles.
“Science’s Quality-Control Process Gets a Makeover”
Oct 25th
Editor’s note: UNDARK published the above-titled article examining the problem of too many article to be peer reviewed and not enough peer reviewers. The article explains,
“New research reveals worrying trends in science’s quality-control process — and new incentives may help correct them… Now, a new movement aims to improve the process: Many academics and journals are pushing to acknowledge and incentivize peer review. Reviewers are also recording their activities on new online platforms, which opens a new source of data about the process. And several new studies, some of which reveal worrying trends, are among the first looks at the nuances of peer review.”
UN BBNJ “Agreement” Would Establish Internationally Uniform Environmental Impact Assessment Standards
Sep 27th
The United Nations’ project Biodiversity Beyond National Jurisdiction (BBNJ) is a spinoff of the Law of the Sea. The UN explains the BBNJ here, part of which follows below:
“In its resolution 72/249 of 24 December 2017, the General Assembly decided to convene an Intergovernmental Conference, under the auspices of the United Nations, to consider the recommendations of the Preparatory Committee established by resolution 69/292 of 19 June 2015 on the elements and to elaborate the text of an international legally binding instrument under the United Nations Convention on the Law of Sea on the conservation and sustainable use of marine biological diversity of areas beyond national jurisdiction, with a view to developing the instrument as soon as possible.
Nature’s Peer Review Debate
Jun 6th
Proposing international peer review standards for regulatory science and risk assessment is one part of CRE’s Voluntary Commitment with the UN. Nature, “the international weekly journal of science,” has posted a “web debate” on peer review. We think this debate is useful background on some of the issues (e.g., peer review of published studies used in risk assessment and regulation) posed by international peer review standards. This Nature website explains:
“Peer review is commonly accepted as an essential part of scientific publication. But the ways peer review is put into practice vary across journals and disciplines. What is the best method of peer review? Is it truly a value-adding process? What are the ethical concerns? And how can new technology be used to improve traditional models?
Peer Review Under The U.S. Information Quality Act
May 28th
On April 24, 2019, The Executive Office of the United States President, Office of Management and Budget (“OMB”), published a “Memorandum for the Heads of executive Departments and Agencies” entitled “Improving Implementation of the Information Quality Act” (“OMB Memorandum”). This Memorandum states that its purpose “is to reinforce, clarify, and interpret agency responsibilities with regard to responsibilities under the Information Quality Act (IQA).”
Read article.
NIST Information Quality Standards
May 9th
Source: US NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF STANDARDS AND TECHNOLOGY
Section 515 of the Treasury and General Government Appropriations Act for Fiscal Year 2001 (Public Law 106-554), hereinafter “Section 515,” directs the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) to issue government-wide guidelines that “provide policy and procedural guidance to Federal agencies for ensuring and maximizing the quality, objectivity, utility, and integrity of information (including statistical information) disseminated by Federal agencies.”
Read article.
Understanding the Role of Data Quality in GDPR Article 5 Compliance
May 9th
Source: Solutions Review
If you are responsible for your organization’s marketing or customer contact data – and you do business with clients in Europe – than you are no doubt familiar by now with the European Union’s General Protection Data Regulation, or GDPR. It takes effect in May 2018, with the force of law and potentially stiff financial penalties behind it.
Meeting the ISO 8000 Requirements for Quality Data
May 9th
EDITOR’S NOTE: ISO 8000 is not directly applicable to Data Quality and Peer Review standards for the assessment and regulation of marine sound. However, we think that the ISO 8000 Standards indicate the potential value of uniform ISO quality standards in many areas. We further think that marine sound assessment and regulation would benefit from rational, effective, transparent and reproducible ISO standards that are science and evidence based.
Source: MIT Information Quality Industry Symposium, July 15-17, 2009