Peer Review in Collective Context of China

Peer review, which incorporates the U.S. ideology of individualism, is regarded as an effective tool in writing classes for improving students' writing proficiency and fostering their critical writing/revising skills (Ramanathan& Atkinson, 1999). Collectivism seems to be an impediment in peer reviewing according to Ramanathan&Atkinson (1999); however, it may not be the case due to the different contexts or cultural beliefs that students carry with.

Modeling and analyzing of nuclear power peer review on enterprise operational efficiency

Based on the practice and analysis of peer review in nuclear power plants, the models on the Pareto improvement of peer review, governance entropy decrease of peer review are set up and discussed. The result shows that the peer review of nuclear power is actually a process of Pareto improvement, and of governance entropy decrease. It’s a process of improvement of the enterprise operational efficiency accordingly.

Thank you to our peer reviewers

The Editorial Office of Water Science and Engineering would like to express their sincere appreciation to the following peer reviewers for their selfless devotion of time and energy to the journal in the year 2012：

Engaging in scientific peer review:tips for young reviewers

Are you a student at a higher institution or a graduate who has published his/her first paper in the Journal of Forestry Research or another legitimate scientific journal?If yes,this paper is written specifically for you since you may soon start receiving invitations to act as a referee.If you are an early career reviewer,you may still find this paper enlightening.Based on his experience,a senior editor summarizes some critical information that,in his view,you may need to know.He provides nine main suggestions to have on your radar,and discusses what you should do or not do as a peer reviewer.

Acknowledgement to peer reviewers in 2011

Neural Regeneration Research （NRR, ISSN 1675-5374, CN11-5422/R）, an English language journal published in China every ten days, is dedicated to presenting peer-reviewed, evidenced based scholarly research in neuroregeneration, including neural stem cells, nerve tissue engineering, gene therapy, and traditional Chinese medicine.

Thank you to our peer reviewers

The Editorial Office of Water Science and Engineering would like to express their sincere appreciation to the following peer reviewers for their devotion of time and energy to the journal in the year 2016.

Open Peer Review in Scientific Publishing: A Web Mining Study of Peer J Authors and Reviewers

Purpose: To understand how authors and reviewers are accepting and embracing Open Peer Review(OPR), one of the newest innovations in the Open Science movement.Design/methodology/approach: This research collected and analyzed data from the Open Access journal Peer J over its first three years(2013–2016). Web data were scraped, cleaned, and structured using several Web tools and programs. The structured data were imported into a relational database. Data analyses were conducted using analytical tools as well as programs developed by the researchers.Findings: Peer J, which supports optional OPR, has a broad international representation of authors and referees. Approximately 73.89% of articles provide full review histories. Of the articles with published review histories, 17.61% had identities of all reviewers and 52.57% had at least one signed reviewer. In total, 43.23% of all reviews were signed. The observed proportions of signed reviews have been relatively stable over the period since the Journal’s inception.Research limitations: This research is constrained by the availability of the peer review history data. Some peer reviews were not available when the authors opted out of publishing their review histories. The anonymity of reviewers made it impossible to give an accurate count of reviewers who contributed to the review process. Practical implications: These findings shed light on the current characteristics of OPR. Given the policy that authors are encouraged to make their articles’ review history public and referees are encouraged to sign their review reports, the three years of Peer J review data demonstrate that there is still some reluctance by authors to make their reviews public and by reviewers to identify themselves. Originality/value: This is the first study to closely examine Peer J as an example of an OPR model journal. As Open Science moves further towards open research, OPR is a final and critical component. Research in this area must identify the best policies and paths towards a transparent and open peer review process for scientific communication.

Thank you to our peer reviewers

The Editorial Office of Water Science and Engineering would like to express their sincere appreciation to the following peer reviewers for their devotion of time and energy to the journal in the year 2015:

Thank you to peer reviewers

The editorial Office of Water Science and Engineering would like to give their special thanks to the following peer reviewers for their selfless devotion of time and energy to the peer review processes from 2008 to 2011：

Six statistical issues in scientific writing that might lead to rejection of a manuscript

Communication plays an important role in advancing scientific fields and disciplines,defining what knowledge is made accessible to the public,and guiding policymaking and regulation of public authorities for the benefit of the environment and society.Hence,what is finally published is of great importance for scientific advancement,social development,environmental and public health,and economic agendas.In recognition of these,the goal of a researcher is to communicate research findings to the scientific community and ultimately,to the public.However,this may often be challenging due to competition for publication space,although to a lesser extent nowadays that online-only publications have expanded.This editorial introduces six statistics-related issues in scientific writing that you should be aware of.These issues can lead to desk rejection or rejection following a peer review,but even if papers containing such issues are published,they may prevent cumulative science,undermine scientific advancement,mislead the public,and result in incorrect or weak policies and regulations.Therefore,addressing these issues from the early research stages can facilitate scientific advancement and prevent rejection of your paper.

All journals should include a correspondence section

Letters to the editor can provide useful scientific information and evaluation of published work as well as acting as an additional level of peer review.Furthermore,letters are good reading material,especially if they involve a debate between authors.Finally,letters are relatively short.Therefore,inexperienced career researchers can use such an opportunity to practice putting together a cogent argument.However,it is far from an ideal situation if letters are the only(or main)type of article on which to base an academic career.

Diffusion tensor imaging in the courtroom:Distinction between scientific specificity and legally admissible evidence

Interest and uptake of science and medicine peer-reviewed literature by readers outside of a paper’s topical subject,field or even discipline is ever-expanding.While the application of knowledge from one field or discipline to others can stimulate innovative solutions to problems facing modern society,it is also fraught with danger for misuse.In the practice of law in the United States,academic papers are submitted to the courts as evidence in personal injury litigation from both the plaintiff(complainant)and defendant.Such transcendence of an academic publication over disciplinary boundaries is immediately met with the challenge of application by a group that inherently lacks in-depth knowledge on the scientific method,the practice of evidence-based medicine,or the publication process as a structured and internationally synthesized process involving peer review and guided by ethical standards and norms.A modern-day example of this is the ongoing conflict between the sensitivity of diffusion tensor imaging(DTI)and the legal standards for admissibility of evidence in litigation cases of mild traumatic brain injury(mTBI).In this review,we amalgamate the peer-reviewed research on DTI in mTBI with the court’s rationale underlying decisions to admit or exclude evidence of DTI abnormalities to support claims of brain injury.We found that the papers which are critical of the use of DTI in the courtroom reflect a primary misunderstanding about how diagnostic biomarkers differ legally from relevant and admissible evidence.The clinical use of DTI to identify white matter abnormalities in the brain at the chronic stage is a valid methodology both clinically as well as forensically,contributes data that may or may not corroborate the existence of white matter damage,and should be admitted into evidence in personal injury trials if supported by a clinician.We also delve into an aspect of science publication and peer review that can be manipulated by scientists and clinicians to publish an opinion piece and misrepresent it as an unbiased,evidencebased,systematic research article in court cases,the decisions of which establish precedence for future cases and have implications on future legislation that will impact the lives of every citizen and erode the integrity of science and medicine practitioners.

Changes in Argumentation Performance:Effects of Teacher-Student Collaborative Assessment

This paper compares the effectiveness of one-semester-long instruction of teacher-student collaborative assessment(TSCA)and trained peer review assessment(TPRA).Dependent variables include occurrence of structural elements of the simplified Toulmin model,and improvement of argumentation substance which refers to the quality of reasoning reflected in Toulmin structural elements.Eighty-one sophomore English majors from TSCA group(n=41)and TPRA group(n=40)were asked to construct two argumentative essays at both the beginning and the end of the semester.The results reveal that the TSCA group produced significantly more counterargument claims and rebuttal data.Additionally,the TSCA group significantly outperformed TPRA group in constructing stronger counterargument claim,rebuttal claim and rebuttal data.

Ethical publishing in intensive care medicine:A narrative review

Ethical standards in the context of scientific publications are increasingly gaining attention. A narrative review of the literature concerning publication ethics wasconducted as found in Pub Med, Google Scholar, relevant news articles, position papers, websites and other sources. The Committee on Publication Ethics has produced guidelines and schedules for the handling of problem situations that have been adopted by professional journals and publishers worldwide as guidelines to authors. The defined requirements go beyond the disclosure of conflicts of interest or the prior registration of clinical trials. Recommendations to authors, editors and publishers of journals and research institutions were formulated with regard to issues of authorship, double publications, plagiarism, and conflicts of interest, with special attention being paid to unethical research behavior and data falsification. This narrative review focusses on ethical publishing in intensive care medicine. As scientific misconduct with data falsification damage patients and society, especially if fraudulent studies are considered important or favor certain therapies and downplay their side effects, it is important to ensure that only studies are published that have been carried out with highest integrity according to predefined criteria. For that also the peer review process has to be conducted in accordance with the highest possible scientific standards and making use of available modern information technology. The review provides the current state of recommendations that are considered to be most relevant particularly in the field of intensive care medicine.

AN EXPLORATORY STUDY OF CONDUCTING PEER REVIEW AMONG CHINESE COLLEGE STUDENTS

Peer review enjoys a solid theoretical foundation and has been widely used in L1 and L2 writing instructions, but remains rare in the EFL environment of China's Mainland. This study attempts to evaluate its use among Chinese students. It finds: (1) Conducting peer review to substitute for part of teacher feedback is as effective as relying completely on the teacher for feedback; (2) Most Chinese students like to get feedback from their peers and think it is useful to them; (3) Chinese students are already capable of effective peer revision, which can also stimulate self-revision.

Thoughts on developing small/medium size no-till equipment for conservation agriculture in Asia:Summary of post-publication peer review comments

Traditional agriculture bases most of its operations or practices on soil tillage,which causes likely occurrence of water and soil erosion and sediment runoff.In order to conserve soil,water and environment,Conservation agriculture(CA)is increasingly adopted to replace traditional tillage agriculture to achieve sustainable and profitable agriculture and subsequently improve the livelihoods of farmers.CA holds great potential for all sizes of farms and agro-ecological systems,but its adoption is most urgently required by smallholder farmers,especially those short of laborers.Small/medium size no-till machines and implements are the key to CA adoption.A review article on small/medium size no/minimum-till seeders in Asia published in IJABE triggers a lot of scientific conversation on how to develop suitable no-till equipment among peer experts.This paper presents a collection of these post-publication peer review comments including commentary,questions,answers,suggestions,critical thinking,etc.The authors of the review article also provide response,summary of the review comments and their own standpoints.This open post-publication review and commentary may add value to the published review article and provide new ideas useful for future research and development of CA equipment.

Aspect-based sentiment analysis of online peer reviews and prediction of paper acceptance results

Peer reviews of academic articles contain reviewers’ overall impressions and specific comments on the contributed articles,which have a lot of sentimental information.By exploring the fine-grained sentiments in peer reviews,we can discover critical aspects of interest to the reviewers.The results can also assist editors and chairmen in making final decisions.However,current research on the aspects of peer reviews is coarse-grained,and mostly focuses on the overall evaluation of the review objects.Therefore,this paper constructs a multi-level fine-grained aspect set of peer reviews for further study.First,this paper uses the multi-level aspect extraction method to extract the aspects from peer reviews of ICLR conference papers.Comparative experiments confirm the validity of the method.Secondly,various Deep Learning models are used to classify aspects’ sentiments automatically,with LCFS-BERT performing best.By calculating the correlation between sentimental scores of the review aspects and the acceptance result of papers,we can find the important aspects affecting acceptance.Finally,this paper predicts acceptance results of papers(accepted/rejected) according to the peer reviews.The optimal acceptance prediction model is XGboost,achieving a Macro_F1 score of 87.43%.