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1 – 10 of over 17000Guangyao Zhang, Licheng Wang, Weixi Xie, Furong Shang, Xinlu Xia, Chunlin Jiang and Xianwen Wang
The purpose of this paper is to reveal a symbol – “however” that authors are very interested in, but few research studies pay attention to the existing literature. The authors aim…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to reveal a symbol – “however” that authors are very interested in, but few research studies pay attention to the existing literature. The authors aim to further insight its function.
Design/methodology/approach
In this research, the authors selected 3,329 valid comments on articles published in the British Medical Journal (BMJ) from 2015 to 2020 as the research objects. The authors showed the length distribution of reviewers' comments. In what follows, the authors analyzed the general distribution of words in comments and reviewer comments’ position to understand reviewers' comments qualitatively in word dimension. Specially, the authors analyzed functions of “however” and “but”, words that authors are most concerned with. In addition, the authors also discussed some factors, which may be related to “however,” that reflect reviewers' praise through regression analysis.
Findings
The authors found that there are marked differences in the length of reviewers' comments under different review rounds. By mapping the reviewers' comments to different sections, the authors found that reviewers are deeply concerned to methods section. Adjectives and adverbs in comments written in different sections of the manuscripts also have different characteristics. The authors tried to interpret the turning function of “however” in scientific communication. Its frequency of use is related to reviewers' identities, specifically academic status. More precisely, junior researchers use “however” in praise more frequently than senior researchers do.
Research limitations/implications
The linguistic feature and function of “however” and “but” in the reviewers' comments of the rejected manuscripts may be different from accepted papers and also worth exploring. Regrettably, the authors cannot obtain the peer review comments of rejected manuscripts. This point may limit the conclusion of the investigation of this article.
Originality/value
Overall, the survey results revealed some language features of reviewers' comments, which could provide a basis of future endeavors for many reviewers in open peer review (OPR) field. Specially, the authors also put forward an interesting symbol to examine the review comments, “however”, for the first time.
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Richard I. Newmark, Marguerite R. Hutton and Cheryl A. Cruz
To explore the status, interests, and intentions of peer reviewers and how editors enlist and muster these factors to enhance the prestige of a scholarly publication.
Abstract
Purpose
To explore the status, interests, and intentions of peer reviewers and how editors enlist and muster these factors to enhance the prestige of a scholarly publication.
Design/methodology/approach
Case study: use of a 30‐year accumulation of editorial office records of one scholarly journal to analyze the contents of peer review comments and correspondence; direct quotes highlight key themes.
Findings
Peer reviewers labor to obtain more than the certification, authentication, and quality of individual works. The volume and variety of commentary generated by a double‐blind peer review process reveal concerns behind reviewer comments to authors and effects over time.
Research limitations/implications
The study centers on one journal, Libraries & Culture, a publication committed to the specialized, interdisciplinary research about the history of libraries and the collection of cultural records.
Originality/value
The strategic nature of the administration and management of the invisible work of peer reviewers becomes more apparent. The interests and intentions of peer reviewers surface in commentary intended only for authors. Commentary relates to a variety of themes including personal interests, pedagogical and disciplinary objectives, field expansion agendas as well as the prestige of the publication. These themes suggest peer review as a potentially effective guiding mechanism for long‐term endeavors that benefit author, reviewer, and editor as interrelated players in arenas where distinction is at stake.
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Wolfgang Kaltenbrunner, Stephen Pinfield, Ludo Waltman, Helen Buckley Woods and Johanna Brumberg
The study aims to provide an analytical overview of current innovations in peer review and their potential impacts on scholarly communication.
Abstract
Purpose
The study aims to provide an analytical overview of current innovations in peer review and their potential impacts on scholarly communication.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors created a survey that was disseminated among publishers, academic journal editors and other organizations in the scholarly communication ecosystem, resulting in a data set of 95 self-defined innovations. The authors ordered the material using a taxonomy that compares innovation projects according to five dimensions. For example, what is the object of review? How are reviewers recruited, and does the innovation entail specific review foci?
Findings
Peer review innovations partly pull in mutually opposed directions. Several initiatives aim to make peer review more efficient and less costly, while other initiatives aim to promote its rigor, which is likely to increase costs; innovations based on a singular notion of “good scientific practice” are at odds with more pluralistic understandings of scientific quality; and the idea of transparency in peer review is the antithesis to the notion that objectivity requires anonymization. These fault lines suggest a need for better coordination.
Originality/value
This paper presents original data that were analyzed using a novel, inductively developed, taxonomy. Contrary to earlier research, the authors do not attempt to gauge the extent to which peer review innovations increase the “reliability” or “quality” of reviews (as defined according to often implicit normative criteria), nor are they trying to measure the uptake of innovations in the routines of academic journals. Instead, they focus on peer review innovation activities as a distinct object of analysis.
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Mike Thelwall, Eleanor-Rose Papas, Zena Nyakoojo, Liz Allen and Verena Weigert
Peer reviewer evaluations of academic papers are known to be variable in content and overall judgements but are important academic publishing safeguards. This article introduces a…
Abstract
Purpose
Peer reviewer evaluations of academic papers are known to be variable in content and overall judgements but are important academic publishing safeguards. This article introduces a sentiment analysis program, PeerJudge, to detect praise and criticism in peer evaluations. It is designed to support editorial management decisions and reviewers in the scholarly publishing process and for grant funding decision workflows. The initial version of PeerJudge is tailored for reviews from F1000Research's open peer review publishing platform.
Design/methodology/approach
PeerJudge uses a lexical sentiment analysis approach with a human-coded initial sentiment lexicon and machine learning adjustments and additions. It was built with an F1000Research development corpus and evaluated on a different F1000Research test corpus using reviewer ratings.
Findings
PeerJudge can predict F1000Research judgements from negative evaluations in reviewers' comments more accurately than baseline approaches, although not from positive reviewer comments, which seem to be largely unrelated to reviewer decisions. Within the F1000Research mode of post-publication peer review, the absence of any detected negative comments is a reliable indicator that an article will be ‘approved’, but the presence of moderately negative comments could lead to either an approved or approved with reservations decision.
Originality/value
PeerJudge is the first transparent AI approach to peer review sentiment detection. It may be used to identify anomalous reviews with text potentially not matching judgements for individual checks or systematic bias assessments.
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Jill Mosteller and Charla Mathwick
– The purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of a retailer-managed ranking system on product reviewers’ well-being and its relationship to customer engagement.
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of a retailer-managed ranking system on product reviewers’ well-being and its relationship to customer engagement.
Design/methodology/approach
Content analysis of reviewers’ posts, generated over a six-month period following a critical incident involving a change in the reviewer ranking system, informs findings.
Findings
Fulfilling needs for social relatedness, competency and autonomy may be critical aspects that underlie reviewer engagement. Findings explain how organic and hierarchical reviewing platform design elements may support or thwart psychological need fulfillment. Reviewers expressed positive well-being when system elements facilitated organic interactions between consumers and reviewers, fulfilling social relatedness and competency needs. Hierarchical design elements elicited mixed well-being sentiments. When reviewers used rank as a feedback mechanism to signal competency development, positive well-being emerged, whereas ranking features perceived as lacking in integrity or reducing one’s autonomy, evoked negative sentiments. A stimulus-organism-response framework, grounded in environmental psychology, provides the basis for the online reviewer engagement model. This study deepens understanding of online customer engagement by illustrating how a ranking system and social elements influence well-being and motive fulfilment, key psychological processes associated with engagement.
Research limitations/implications
Highly engaged reviewers on one community platform inform findings, so results are not representative of all reviewers, but are relevant for conceptual purposes concerning critical incidents.
Practical implications
Findings have implications for the design of recognition platforms created to support customer engagement in online reviewing communities.
Social implications
Public ranking systems designed to recognize and reward reviewers can enhance as well as degrade consumer well-being within an online service environment.
Originality/value
First empirical work to examine the value of consumer well-being as it relates to engagement within an online reviewing service context.
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The purpose of this paper is to give advice on how to achieve more productive academic writing work by commenting on 13 rules for good work. This is an increasingly important…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to give advice on how to achieve more productive academic writing work by commenting on 13 rules for good work. This is an increasingly important aspect of academic work for young scholars as publication is the main basis for promotion and salary increases in Europe today.
Design/methodology/approach
The approach is to draw on many years of experience as editor of management journals and, when possible, give illustrative comments.
Findings
The claim brought forward by the entire list of academic writing rules is that by living up to them the academic will improve his or her publication record, which will effect life income.
Originality/value
There is an expanding literature on academic writing, mostly in book form. This paper provides the essentials in compressed form.
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Barry J. Babin and Julie Guidry Moulard
The purpose of this paper is to consider various strengths and weaknesses of the academic review process with an emphasis on the effect the process has on the relevance of…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to consider various strengths and weaknesses of the academic review process with an emphasis on the effect the process has on the relevance of business journals, particularly in the marketing literature.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors not only highlight some of the literature addressing the review process but also present insight and opinion largely based on decades of experience editing, reviewing, writing and publishing.
Findings
Reviewers can help develop research papers, but reviewers remain gatekeepers who, theoretically, protect journals from publishing research that would diminish the truthful body of knowledge within a field. However, many inefficiencies, some of which involve volition, allow one to question whether the review process as we know it best accomplishes that purpose.
Practical implications
Recognizing that reviewers affect journal prestige, the paper concludes with a number of ideas for improving the gate-keeping and developmental functions for academic articles.
Social implications
Society should extract value from what appears in publicly circulated, academic, refereed journals. However, to the extent that the publication process interferes with objective dissemination of knowledge, that value is diminished and perhaps even absent.
Originality/value
The paper intends to stimulate frank conversation about the Academy’s refereed publication process and factors that tend to interfere with its function.
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Using a descriptive case study approach, this paper aims to validate academic librarians’ perceptions that they are marginalized by faculty during academic program reviews, and…
Abstract
Purpose
Using a descriptive case study approach, this paper aims to validate academic librarians’ perceptions that they are marginalized by faculty during academic program reviews, and recommends ways for the two groups to collaborate more effectively to make program reviews more meaningful.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper describes a case study at a Canadian university where the six types of documents produced as part of the program review process for ten graduate programs were analyzed using corpus analysis tools and techniques, such as keyword generation and key word in context analysis. For each program, documents were examined to determine the volume and nature of the discussion involving libraries in the self-study, library report annex, site visit itinerary, external reviewers’ report, academic program’s response and final assessment report.
Findings
The empirical evidence from the corpus analysis validates the findings of previous perception-based studies and confirms that librarians currently have a minor role in program reviews. Best practices and gaps emerged, prompting five recommendations for ways in which academic librarians can play a more meaningful role in the program review process.
Practical implications
The results suggest that programs are not currently putting their best foot forward during program reviews, but this could be improved by including librarians more fully in the program review process.
Originality/value
The present study contributes to the existing body of knowledge about the role of academic librarians in the program review process by providing direct and empirical measures to triangulate previous perception-based investigations that rely on surveys and interviews. It summarizes limitations of the current institutional quality assurance process and the benefits to be gained by involving librarians more in the process. It offers recommendations for policymakers and practitioners with regard to potential best practices for facilitating librarian involvement in academic program reviews.
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Xianfeng Zhang, Yang Yu, Hongxiu Li and Zhangxi Lin
User-generated content (UGC), i.e. the feedback from consumers in the electronic market, including structured and unstructured types, has become increasingly important in…
Abstract
Purpose
User-generated content (UGC), i.e. the feedback from consumers in the electronic market, including structured and unstructured types, has become increasingly important in improving online businesses. However, the ambiguity and heterogeneity, and even the conflict between the two types of UGC, require a better understanding from the perspective of human cognitive psychology. By using online feedback on hotel services, the purpose of this paper is to explore the effects of satisfaction level, opinion dispersion and cultural context background on the interrelationship between structured and unstructured UGC.
Design/methodology/approach
Natural language processing techniques – specifically, topic classification and sentiment analysis on the sentence level – are adopted to retrieve consumer sentiment polarity on five attributes relative to itemized ratings. Canonical correlation analyses are conducted to empirically validate the interplay between structured and unstructured UGC among different populations segmented by the mean-variance approach.
Findings
The variety of cognitions displayed by individuals affects the general significant interrelationship between structured and unstructured UGC. Extremely dissatisfied consumers or those with heterogeneous opinions tend to have a closer interconnection, and the interaction between valence and dispersion further strengthens or loosens the relationship. The satisfied or neutral consumers tend to show confounding sentiment signals in relation to the two different UGC. Chinese consumers behave differently from non-Chinese consumers, resulting in a relatively looser interplay.
Practical implications
By identifying consistent opinion providers and promoting more valuable UGC, UGC platforms can raise the quality of information generated. Hotels will then be able to enhance their services through the strategic use of UGC by analyzing reviews with dispersed low-itemized rating and by addressing the differences exhibited by non-Chinese customers. This analytical method can also help to create richly structured sentiment information from unstructured UGC.
Originality/value
This paper investigates the variety of cognitive behaviors in the process when UGC are contributed by online reviewers, focussing on the consistency between structured and unstructured UGC. The study helps researchers understanding emotion recognition and affective computing in social media analytics, which is achieved by exploring the variety of UGC information and its relationship to the contributors’ cognitions. The analytical framework adopted also improves the prior techniques.
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