Peer Review and Publication Process

This assignment provides a comprehensive overview of peer review and its significance in academic publishing. It covers various aspects, including the types of peer review, how to effectively participate in the process, and the importance of publication metrics in highlighting research impact. The assignment also touches on plagiarism prevention and other ethical issues related to publishing. With numerous references from credible sources, this document is a valuable resource for researchers looking to understand the complexities of peer review and academic publishing.

Writing for Publication
-Please mind the word count of 2,000 words + 10% (2,200
words including intext citations). References list is not
counted. Going way above the word count will be penalised
by the assessor.
-Please recheck/review your referencing style when
referencing online websites (e.grin.ac.uk,
authorservices.wiley.com, doi.org). Please follow APA 6th
Edition.
-Also, please check the 2nd paragraph of the assignment
and see my comment on ‘WILEY’.
-Please articulate the role of publication metrics in deciding
which journal to utilise if you have a publication to submit.
-Please mention a brief conclusion.
-Please mention the importance of ethical and legal
practice in publishing. You may mention that prior to the
“Merits and demerits of peer review systems and issues
around open access to publications” section of the essay.
Please see PAGE 12 of the Learning Modules document,
which I previously provided:
“2.4. Ethical practice in publishing scholarly papers
Published papers, without appropriate permission, should not contain material that has
been previously published, and this includes material previously published by the author
submitting a manuscript. Authors should not pass off the work of others as their own and
should not publish articles based on fabricated results. All authors who made a significant
contribution to a manuscript in terms of design, analysis and writing should be included
as authors; others may be acknowledged but should not be included as authors. All
authors should agree to the contents of the final submitted paper and all authors should
indicate if they have any conflicts of interest in publishing the work.
Reading 2.2
Pierson C (2012). Ethical and legal aspects of publishing: avoiding plagiarism and other
issues. In Holland K, Watson R. Writing for publication in nursing and healthcare: getting
it right. Oxford, Wiley-Blackwell, pp 193-208.
Ensure that you can define the following terms: plagiarism; duplication; fabrication;
authorship; conflict of interest. Find the Committee on Publication Ethics website:
http://publicationethics.org/ and read as much there as you can about ethical practice on

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publishing and the sanctions that can be used against individuals who infringe it.“ – Page
12.
In the context of academic and scientific journal articles, publication has a vital part in
the progress as well as the development of any profession. This allows professionals to share
their best practices and results with others in the domain of knowledge. The publications also
serve as a source of information and knowledge as well as evidence for professionals and
students alike, and therefore help in the growth of the profession. Such actions ensure quality
and reliability of the research and the providence of scholastic evidence (Ali & Watson,
2016).
Steps in the publication process (critical discussion)
The process of publication starts when an author submits a manuscript to a journal.
After this, the journal passes through a sequence of stages before being published finally, as
shown in the diagram below, which outlines the editorial process at Wiley(Wiley is a global
publishing company with specialization in academic publishing. The process of
publication was discussed by Ali & Watson, 2016 for which the operational process of
publication at Wiley is discussed in the article). It should, however, be noted that the
editorial process and task distribution can vary slightly from one journal to the other,
however, the diagram tries to show all the possible steps in the process of publication.

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Figure 1: the editorial process (Abbreviations: EiC- editor‐in‐chief; EA- editorial assistant,
SPi is a company providing an editorial assistant, ME-managing editor). Source: (Ali &
Watson, 2016).
In the first stage, editorial review is conducted that helps in the assessment of merits
and qualities of the manuscript. Here, the journal’s editor in chief or the editor reviews the
manuscript to understand if the manuscript is relevant and sustainable to undergo a peer-to-
peer review. Additional editorial checks are done by editorial assistants, like similarity check
(with other sources) using specialized similarity detection applications. This stage ensures
that the selected article deserves the merit to go through the later stages of evaluation (Ali &
Watson, 2016).
Once the manuscript crosses this stage, an editor and 2-3 reviewers are assigned by
the managing editortoanalyse the manuscript further to provide feedback on its quality,
publish-ability, and rigor. In this (peer-review) stage, it is decided if the manuscript can be
accepted or rejected or if it needs further changes before publication and the information is
communicated to the author accordingly.If accepted, the manuscript moves to the next stage,
and if changes are needed, it gets revised by the author and is peer-reviewed again. This

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ensures a thorough analysis by subject matter experts, before being validated (Jacobsen et al.,
2017).
After this stage, it moves on to stage three, which is production. At this stage, it is
ensured that the article produced is readable, comprehensible and free of spelling mistakes,
and maintains adherence to the presentation style acceptable by the journal. After a check and
approval of the final draft by the author, the manuscript moves to the final stage, the
administrative process. During this stage, proper tracking number known as the Digital
Object Identifier (DOI) is allocated to the academic/scientific literature. The last 2 steps
ensure the article is made available in electronic and print media (doi.org, 2018).
The types of peer review that can be conducted for the academic manuscripts/articles
can include closed peer review, open peer review, post-publication peer review, single blind
or double-blind review (authorservices.wiley.com, 2018).
Purpose of quality assurance in publication process (importance of QA)
Quality assessment/assurance plays a crucial role in the research community as they
inform important decisions related to funding, research, recruitment, promotion of the
research and how its findings are presented. They help to establish the reliability of a research
work (reading.ac.uk, 2018).The QA techniques systems have evolved in response to several
factors like increase in research volume, increased stress on costs, competition between
researchers and new types of research outputs (Ali & Watson, 2016).
The process is aimed to ensure that the research studies are being properly conducted
with effectiveness and efficiency, and when completed, the results of the study are
presentable and maintain a high standard. This also ensures that the research information or
records, also known as ‘minutes of science’ provides results with great accuracy. Quality

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check also helps other researchers and readers to identify and locate the best quality and most
significant findings, which is relevant to them and can be done within a limited amount of
time or expertise (rin.ac.uk, 2018).
It must be noted that quality assurance and quality assessments are distinct functions,
where assessment can imply a process or method for the evaluation of an academic work,
while assurance implies a guarantee or promise, which means that academic work will be of
good quality and can be trustworthy. Thus,quality assurance is a set of protocols that are
made to ensure a required standard of quality in the product (rin.ac.uk, 2018).
The assessment procedure involves reviews which require human judgments and
quantitative analysis that can grade the quality of an academic work as poor, mediocre,
excellent and outstanding. The process of peer reviews allows this stage of quality assessment
to be conducted (rin.ac.uk, 2018). The system of peer review is central to science and
academia and is an agreed upon protocol in the publication process, professional practice as
well as academic rewarding systems (Lee et al., 2013).
Quality assurance also ensures that ethical practice in the publication of scholarly
papers is maintained. The process ensures that published articles should not contain
previously published information without proper permission, or does not contain any
fabricated data. Moreover, ethical practice also ensures proper acknowledgement of the
authors and contributors to an academic article is maintained (Pierson, 2012).
Merits and demerits of peer review systems and issues around open access to
publications
Merits:

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The process of peer review has several beneficiaries like the authors, editors,
publishers and peer reviewers, the discipline as well as the society. The peer review process
provides the authors the opportunity to develop clarity and quality of the manuscript. This is
an important aspect of the exhibition of expertise and knowledge possessed by the author,
and therefore adds credibility to the information. Because of such aspects, publishing a peer-
reviewed journal is considered as a prestigious achievement, and the feedback of reviewer’s
guide and the editor of the journal can further help to identify manuscripts that are acceptable
or substandard (Christenberry, 2011). The ability to differentiate between good and bad
manuscript can be useful for the decision-making process for the editors and publishers, as
they can select the academic work that passes specific quality parameters (Ali& Watson,
2016).This can also help to improve the credibility of the editor and publisher. The peer
review process can also benefit the peer reviewers too, as it fosters the development of
knowledge and expertise on the subject, and therefore allow scope for personal and
professional growth (Pierson, 2015). Even the society at large can benefit from the peer
review process, when a published manuscript is utilized for the suggestion, implication or
inference of social policies or need for policy changes, thereby fostering development or
growth within the society (Ali & Watson, 2016). Publication of research or scholarly papers
that are written properly, following correct methodology with sound and well-informed study
can also help in the development or professions such as nursing.
Demerits:
The process of peer review however also attracts a lot of criticism, mainly because of
the delay in the publication process caused due to it. Also, detecting misconduct and
malpractice in academic work might not always be effective, and the selection of reviewers
might also incorporate bias in the system. The judgments made by the experts can also have
inconsistencies and can lead to a conservative approach that prevents innovation and thus act

6Writing for Publication in Healthcare
as a disadvantage for interdisciplinary studies. Other criticisms of the review system include
the hidden costs of the system, since the reviewers are generally unpaid, which places a
burden on the review community, and can lead to unsustainable conditions with the
increasing volume of publications (rin.ac.uk, 2018). Several academics criticized the process
of peer review as being wasteful of scientific time, ineffective, lottery-like, anti-innovatory,
slow, expensive, easily misused, inefficient, prone to bias, not properly equipped to identify
fraud and can also be sometimes irrelevant (Smith, 2015). It is also assumed that these
problems with the peer review process can also adversely impact the quality of the reviews
and therefore the publication quality as well. The significant flaws of the peer review process
have been identified by Ali and Watson (2016) as, slow process of publication, adverse
effects on authors, inadequate training and preparation of reviewers, diversity in the review
needs, ineffective review process and potential for bias, which can affects all types of peer
review processes.
Importance of publication metrics in the evaluation of journals
Publication metrics provides the scope for the measurement and reporting of
academic impact and productivity by research groups, academic clinicians, institutions, and
departments. This is vital to demonstrate the diffusion of knowledge, and synthesis into
practical application and therefore used to improve health outcomes through clinical utility
(Carpenter et al., 2014).
The Bibliometric method is a quantitative analysis that uses information like
document number, author name, source, data elements that uncover characteristics, patterns,
relationships that can exhibit the productivity, quality and impact of the individual
investigator or research team. The data metrics of publications are designed to capture a
diverse array of research activities and can serve as an effective means to express the

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productivity of the researcher and also the impact of the work in the academic community.
The impact or influence of an academic work is generally measured through citations of the
academic work in other publications, thereby supporting the validity of the former article.
This also demonstrates that the productivity and impact of the said article were exhibited in
various academic and scientific environments. These publication data metrics can include
cited articles, composition, and size of the research group, type of publication, h-index and
the name of the journal (Spreckelsen et al., 2011).
The number of publications by an author or research group is an elementary form of
metric of publication data. The metric can also denote the type of publication and helps to
differentiate between the number of research articles and reviewed articles. This information
can be useful for funding agencies to differentiate researchers while renewing or awarding
grants (Birks et al., 2014). Studies have also shown that multiple publications by an author
were a predictor of future publication performance (Rezek et al., 2012).
Author status is a metric that is based on the status of the author in the publication.
This is particularly important in cases of a collaborative article that involves multiple authors,
and the status of the author in the article can reflect upon his/her productivity in the team.
Journal Citation report is a score calculated to assess the effect of a published work.
The calculation is done by dividing the number of citation to an article in a particular year by
the total articles published in the previous two years (Alberts, 2013). A higher number of
citations is generally understood as a larger acceptability of the information in the article.
The source of publication highlights the journal where the article is published and
shows the areas of specialty and expertise of the author through the selection of journals
publishing his/her paper. A variety of the journals reflects upon diversity in the expertise of

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the author(s) while maintaining exclusiveness to specific journals can reflect a specialized
niche of the author.
The H-index is a comparatively metric which uses citations and publications to give
an analyse of the importance, significance, and impact of research contributions of a
researcher. It is measured based on the number citation of each manuscript published and
helps to assess academic performance (Acuna & Penner, 2017).
Document-level metrics provides evidence of a nascent influence of an academic
work and can be used complementary to the measurement of impacts of citations and used to
analyse multiple examples of academic work outside the domain of peer-reviews.
These publication metrics can be used to determine Journals that have the most
academic impacts and has the widest reach in the academic community. Metrics like
publication report, bibliometrics, H index and citation report can help to analyse the
productivity of a journal/author.

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*REFERENCES*
Acuna, D. E., & Penner, O. (2017). 7.2. The future h-index is an excellent way to predict
scientists’ future impact. Controversies in Medical Physics: a Compendium of
Point/Counterpoint Debates Volume 3, 274.
Alberts, B. (2013). Impact Factor Distortions. Science, 340(6134), 787-787.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/science.1240319
Ali, P., & Watson, R. (2016). Peer review and the publication process. Nursing Open, 3(4),
193-202. http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/nop2.51
authorservices.wiley.com. (2018). Types of Peer Review | Wiley. Authorservices.wiley.com.
Retrieved 19 March 2018, from https://authorservices.wiley.com/Reviewers/journal-
reviewers/what-is-peer-review/types-of-peer-review.html
Birks, Y., Fairhurst, C., Bloor, K., Campbell, M., Baird, W., & Torgerson, D. (2014). Use of
the h-index to measure the quality of the output of health services researchers. Journal
of health services research & policy, 19(2), 102-109.
Carpenter, C., Cone, D., &Sarli, C. (2014). Using Publication Metrics to Highlight Academic
Productivity and Research Impact. Academic Emergency Medicine, 21(10), 1160-
1172. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/acem.12482
Christenbery, T. L. (2011). Manuscript peer review: a guide for advanced practice
nurses. Journal of the American Association of Nurse Practitioners, 23(1), 15-22.
Doi.org. (2018). Digital Object Identifier System. Doi.org. Retrieved 19 March 2018, from
https://www.doi.org/

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Jacobson, R. M., Fairbrother, G., Sheldrick, R. C., &Szilagyi, P. G. (2017). The Role of the
Peer Reviewer. Academic Pediatrics, 17(2), 105-106.
Lee, C. J., Sugimoto, C. R., Zhang, G., & Cronin, B. (2013). Bias in peer review. Journal of
the Association for Information Science and Technology, 64(1), 2-17.
Pierson, C. A. (2015). Reviewing journal manuscripts: An easy to follow guide for any nurse
reviewing journal manuscripts for publication.
Pierson C (2012). Ethical and legal aspects of publishing: avoiding plagiarism and other
issues. In Holland K, Watson R. Writing for publication in nursing and healthcare:
getting it right. Oxford, Wiley-Blackwell, pp 193-208.
Reading.ac.uk. (2018). Quality assurance in research - University of Reading. Reading.ac.uk.
Retrieved 19 March 2018, from https://www.reading.ac.uk/internal/academic-and-
governance-services/quality-assurance-in-research/reas-RSqar.aspx
Rezek, I., McDonald, R. J., &Kallmes, D. F. (2012). Pre-residency publication rate strongly
predicts future academic radiology potential. Academic Radiology, 19(5), 632-634.
Rin.ac.uk. (2018). Quality assurance and assessment of scholarly research. Rin.ac.uk.
Retrieved 16 March 2018, from
http://www.rin.ac.uk/system/files/attachments/Quality_Assurance_screen_0.pdf
Smith E. (2015) Ineffective at any dose? Why peer review simply doesn't work. Times
Higher Education. Available at https://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/content/the-
peer-review-drugs-dont-work on 15 March 2016.

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Spreckelsen, C., Deserno, T. M., & Spitzer, K. (2011). Visibility of medical informatics
regarding bibliometric indices and databases. BMC medical informatics and decision
making, 11(1), 24.