RESOURCE: “What Constitutes Peer Review of Data: A Survey of Published Peer Review Guidelines”

Todd A. Carpenter (National Information Standards Organization) uploaded “What Constitutes Peer Review of Data: A Survey of Published Peer Review Guidelines” to the Cornell University Repository to download. The paper reviews the policies around publication of data sets and how to understand peer review and data sets. Carpenter writes:

The process of peer review of articles varies from title to title, but it usually consists of two stages: an editorial assessment by the journal’s editor or editorial team, then an external evaluation by several peer reviewers…If a paper moves passes this initial test, it is then sent to independent reviewers for consideration. These reviewers usually provide a deeper analysis and critique of the paper, a step that, according to Walker and Rocha da Silva, involves factors such as study design and methodology, soundness of process and results, data clarity, interpretation of results, completeness of the study, novelty and significance, ethical issues, and other journal-specific criteria. Of course, this process isn’t without its critics, its faults, its troubles, or its resulting errors.