The Publishing Research Consortium is a group of associations and publishers, which supports global research into scholarly communication in order to enable evidence-based discussion.

Our objective is to support work that is scientific and pro-scholarship. Overall, we aim to promote an understanding of the role of publishing and its impact on research and teaching.

PRC publishes new study of Peer Review

A new international study of over 3,000 senior authors, reviewers and editors shows that Researchers want to improve, not change, the system of Peer Review for journal articles.  They believe that it helps to improve scientific communications and increases the overall quality of published papers.  Alternatives such as 'open peer review' were not popular;  however, some were interested in post-publication review.

Researchers did, however, strongly prefer double-blind review to the currently prevalent single-blind system, seeing this as a way to improve both objectivity and fairness. A majority of reviewers and editors also said it would be desirable to be able to review authors’ data as part of peer review.  While of the majority of respondents saw peer review as an effective filter for research, some did not think it was effective at detecting plagiarism, fraud or misconduct. 

(January 2008)