{"id":3445,"date":"2018-09-08T13:12:48","date_gmt":"2018-09-08T11:12:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.learning-by-gaming.net\/?p=3445"},"modified":"2018-09-08T13:12:48","modified_gmt":"2018-09-08T11:12:48","slug":"finding-of-the-week-286","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blog.learning-by-gaming.net\/?p=3445","title":{"rendered":"Finding of the week #286"},"content":{"rendered":"

Are peer-reviews really a good way?
\n<\/strong><\/p>\n

During my ongoing literature review I often discover interesting facts about things I\u2019ve never thought about. Sometimes I can connect these facts with my own observations: The result is mostly a completely new idea why things are as they are. Maybe these ideas are new to you, too. Therefore I\u2019ll share my new science based knowledge with you!<\/em><\/p>\n

This week: This time, I think about the problematic peer-review process. It is intended to ensure a high scientific quality but often also causes the rejection of innovative work as reviewers are coming from a different field or simply do not take the time to really read a paper.<\/p>\n

Currently, the common way of publishing scientific results is to write them up in a paper, submit it to a journal or conference, and let peer-reviewers decide whether the approach is correct or not. While this ensures a certain degree of scientific quality, it also creates some unneccessary obstacles.<\/p>\n

Depending of the scope of the journal or the conference, authors might have to deal with reviewers coming from different scientific directions. As a result, there is a chance of being mainly reviewed by researchers who have no in-depth experience in the paper’s topic. This leads to the problem that these reviewers then potentially cannot correctly value the contributions of a paper as the presented approach might seem wrong to them. There is also the chance that they accept a paper that has no real novelty as they cannot discover wrong approaches.<\/p>\n

Thus, it is possible that good and important research gets critized and rejected because it seems incorrect from a certain perspective. This especially is problematic when a new technology is being used that is not well discussed in literature due to its novelty. Then, scientists have a hard time finding a good theoretical basis that goes beyond the scientific curiosity.<\/p>\n

Last year, I experienced such a rejection. The reviewers did not understand why I compared the effects of immersive virtual reality with the effects of desktop 3D in respect to the training outcome of a serious game. This week, I was asked a similar question during a conference. Interestingly, the question was not being asked because there was no understanding for my approach, but because the scientist was criticized for similar reasons. He just wanted to see if I was able to come up with a better explanation.<\/p>\n

In the end, this question made me thinking again about the entire peer-review process. Is it really ensuring a good scientific quality when it results in the rejections of interesting projects due to a lack of previous work? How can this be a good approach when it effectively blocks innovation? I hope the scientific community will reconsider this approach one day and come up with a better solution to ensure a high quality without blocking innovative research.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Are peer-reviews really a good way? During my ongoing literature review I often discover interesting facts about things I\u2019ve never thought about. Sometimes I can connect these facts with my own observations: The result is mostly a completely new idea … Weiterlesen →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3445","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-finding-of-the-week","category-forschung"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.learning-by-gaming.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3445","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.learning-by-gaming.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.learning-by-gaming.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.learning-by-gaming.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.learning-by-gaming.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3445"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/blog.learning-by-gaming.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3445\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3447,"href":"http:\/\/blog.learning-by-gaming.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3445\/revisions\/3447"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.learning-by-gaming.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3445"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.learning-by-gaming.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3445"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.learning-by-gaming.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3445"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}