Faculty Development and Diversity

After the editors of Infection and Immunity retracted six articles in one year, they got to thinking about the frequency of retractions.

They took a sampling of 17 journals with a range of impact factors and then created an index for each one that measured the number of retracted articles from 2001-2010 as a proportion of total articles published.

Their findings show that the higher the impact factor of the journal, the greater the frequency of retractions. They speculate that the rewards of publishing in prestigious venues may motivate researchers to engage in scientific misconduct.

Others who have looked at the data remind us that the number of retractions in all journals is vanishingly small. While it’s important to enforce ethical research practices, we may be overstating the impact of retracted papers.

Inside Higher Ed reports that the American Economics Association is switching its journals' editorial process from double blind to single blind peer review. They make several arguments for the change:

• In the age of search engines, reviewers can easily and accurately guess the identity of authors.
• Making both reviewers and authors anonymous imposes administrative burdens on editors.
• Knowing the author will allow reviewers to assess bias and potential conflicts of interest.

On the other side of the debate, a 2008 study found that when the journal Behavioral Ecology added double blind peer review, the number of female, first-authored papers increased.

When I first started reviewing double blind manuscripts, I would often look for clues to the author's identity. It was partly from curiosity and partly so I could evaluate the submission in light of the scholar's other work. More recently, when I review double blind articles, it's not worth the effort to track down the author, so I make judgments based on the manuscript itself. I doubt that it has made any difference in my ultimate recommendations, but it does save time.