Peer review-a responsibility and a power of the university ?

Watch the VIDEO of the presentation. Journal coordinated peer reviewing, a hallmark of scholarly publishing, is also a pivotal part of other central academic processes, such as evaluation of research grant applications, and ranking of applicants for faculty/research positions. Hence, journal coordinated peer reviewing may be viewed as “the mother of academic peer reviewing”. On this background, it is astonishing that universities and other public RD iii) better control of how scientific staff use their time for the good of the university; iv) managing a unified policy shaping of peer reviewing, reducing fraud and flaws. This will in turn increase quality of the research produced by the universities.     The EU has recently announced their goal of making all European scientific articles freely accessible by 2020. This announcement was made unanimously by the EU ministers responsible for research and innovation. The ministers have not announced what means to use in achieving their announced goal. We suggest a united approach whereby taking control of the peer review job could be an interesting road to follow. Such a unified international action among universities and grant agencies would be very beneficial in order to make the changes needed to establish peer reviewing as a truly academically based responsibility. The increasing international agreements and actions to implement open access publishing are indications that such changes are possible. By standing together universities will be able to break the economic grip that the big commercial publishing houses have on academic research. Some may argue that it is the right of each individual scientist to decide on the extent and for what journal to perform peer reviewing. However, if an employer for some reason limits the amount of time used to do peer reviewing for certain commercial publishing houses, it would not interfere with the academic freedom to do research and to choose freely where and how to publish. After all, work contracts include instructions on how to perform a certain amount of teaching, administration and research. The option of directing where to do or not to do peer review should not be very controversial. By taking control of and organizing peer reviewing universities would obtain a means to regain the academic freedom that was lost when commercial enterprises took over the society driven journals, introducing heavy paywalls. And it may facilitate a development towards an open science regime.

UiT The Arctic University of Norway a private affair between the individual researcher and the publishing houses?
Part 1 Where is journal peer review located on the map of scholarly publishing stakeholders?
Part 2 Why should the university be conscious of their ownership of and responsibility for scholarly peer reviewing?
Part 1 Where and how is journal peer review located on the map of scholarly publishing stakeholders?
-who owns peer review?-who pays for peer review?-who depends on peer review?
Part 1 Where and how is journal peer review located on the map of scholarly publishing stakeholders?
-who owns it?-who pays for it?-who depends on it?
How to draw the map of publishing stakeholders to prepare for a meaningful discussion?

Journals/pub lishers
Scholarly publishing: Map of stakeholders

Scholarly publishing: Map of stakeholders Flow of money
Another stakeholder must be included on this map to make the discussion meaningful and realistic:  The cost of peer reviewing -who pays and who benefits?

THE RESEARCHER
The cost of peer reviewing -who pays and who benefits?
• Direct cost of reviewing an article: £100 Do the universities care how and how much their employees work "for free" to do peer review for the journals?
Question asked to faculty staff at major universities in Europe, USA and Japan: "Does your university regard reviewing as an important activity of its scientific staff, by incentivizing or controlling it in any way (similar to how teaching and research are incentivized and controlled" Replies, in unison:

i) No active interest by the university to make sure that peer reviewing carried out by their employees follow certain standards ii) No measures taken by the university to incentivize peer reviewing iii) Peer reviewing is not included by the university as a compulsory work task for scientific staff
Do the universities care how and how much their employees work "for free" to do peer review for the journals?
Part 2 Why should the university be conscious of their ownership of and responsibility for scholarly peer reviewing?
-negotiate prices with the big publishing houses -accelerate implementation of open access -increase the quality of research Why universities should identify journal peer review as an activity coordinated and owned by the universities • Increased power to improve the standards and performance of peer reviewing.The university, but not the journals, may decide on matters such as: i) Should all scientific staff do their share of peer review?ii) Should the quality and ethics of peer review be peer reviewed, in the same way as research itself is peer reviewed?iii) Should peer review be regarded as being just as important as doing research and writing papers?iv) Should peer review be implemented as part of the curriculum?v) Should new models of peer reviewing be explored?More why: Negotiating power!
• The hours paid by the university to do peer review should be viewed as in-kind payment • -from the universities to the publishers • -on top of what the universities pay for subscriptions and article processing charge (APC) • Realizing peer review as part of the payment opens up for the universities to use their peer review effort in negotiations to achieve: More on negotiating power Realizing they are actually paying for the substantial cost of peer reviewing the universities may decide to pay less to the publishing houses Universities/tax payers pay the publishers in tree ways: 1) By writing the papers for free 2) By peer reviewing for free 3) By subscribing + paying article processing fee

But the universities only negotiate the pecuniaries in point 3)!
-If the publishers are too greedy and unwilling to reduce their prices in point 3), why not hold back the in-kind payment done in point 2)?
A new bargaining strategy Journals/publ ishers

Peer review
Universities/ R&D institutions Bargaining chip: Threaten to withdraw the peer review labor from publishers who are unwilling to enter into agreement at a reasonable price.
-University researchers may continue submitting papers anywhere -The university will continue to pay for the access to the published papers -The university will continue to pay article processing charges (APCs) -But the university may hold back the in kind-payment of the peer review effort International cooperation: -The international community of universities may agree to join forces in holding back peer review towards the least agreeable publishers.-They will notice!Depends completely on academic peer reviewing Owns and controls academic peer reviewing Peer review can be a powerful bargaining chip for the universities to implement 100% OA Coordinated international action is needed for this to happen.
EU exclaims that by 2020 the union will have established 100% OA*.This is not possible without a large-scale coordinated international action.
Step 1: Agree on a common international policy that peer review is provided and maintained by the universities.
Step 2: Use this as a coordinated negotiation power to push the publishing houses to implement 100% OA.This power is strong.
* https://www.theguardian.com/science/2016/may/28/eu-ministers-2020-target-free-access-scientific-papers Realizing that peer review is a responsibility of the university enables new strategies to -increase the quality and reliability of peer reviewing (implement peer review as part of the curriculum) -increase the management and policy shaping of peer review -reduce fraud and flaws in peer reviewing -all these measures will contribute to increasing the research quality CONCLUSIONS -Peer reviewing in some way is the only accepted way of quality checking published research.
-Journal peer reviewing is mother of academic peer reviewing (grant and job applications).
-Scholarly journals are totally dependent on peer reviewing to preserve their reputation as reliable publishing channels of scientific research.
-Universities give peer reviewing service away for free to the publishing houses.
-Astonishingly, universities show virtually no interest in peer reviewing, and have not yet realized the considerable negotiation power they miss when subscription prizes are discussed with the publishing houses.
-By taking ownership and responsibility of the peer review process the universities may contribute considerably to accelerate the implementation of 100% OA.
-By waking up and realize their ownership of and responsibility for peer reviewing the universities will enable maintenance and policy shaping of peer reviewing that is badly needed, to increase efficiency, quality and reliablity of this corner stone of scholarly research.
research ideas; design and carry out research -Write manuscripts and submit to journals -Allocate research grants, based on peer review of applications, which is much based on journal peer review Use journal peer review to employ researchers and allocate local research grants -Carry out journal peer review -Write grant applications and carry out reviewing of peers' grant applications and job applications Researchers a volunteer activity provided by researchers, to be utilized as a gratis service for the publishers Journals/pub lishers This delusion makes it possible for the publishers to maintain their rather lucrative business model

(
Smith, R. Breast cancer research 2010, 12 Suppl 4, S13.)    • Unpaid non-cash costs of peer review undertaken by academics: £1.9bn globally each year (www.rin.ac.uk) • Survey at UiT: 15-20,000h spent annually on journal peer reviewing (Refsdal, M. Peer review at the University of Tromsø: A study of time spent on reviewing and researchers' opinions on peer review.Master thesis 2010)• In reality public funds pay 3x for the work: i) to do it; ii) to peer rewiew it, and iii) to access it.The commercial publishing houses benefit greatly from this.

Scholarly publishing: Map of stakeholders Flow of money Public domain Private domain
A more realistic map reflecting the way many of us perceive the stakeholders of scholarly publishing