Concerns Expressed: A Snap-shot of Expressions of Concern in FT50 Salim Moussa, Université de Gafsa, Institut Supérieur des Études Appliquées en Humanités, Cité des Jeunes,
Gafsa 2133, Tunisia Jaime A. Teixeira da Silva, Ikenobe 3011-2, Kagawa-ken, 761-0799, Japan
Concerns Expressed: A Snap-shot of Expressions of Concern in FT50 Moussa, S., & Teixeira da Silva, J. A. LIBRES Volume 33, Issue 1 (2023), page 1-8
Background. An expression of concern (EoC) is usually issued when there are concerns about the integrity or accuracy of a previously published article, although those concerns in themselves are not serious enough to warrant a formal retraction at the time the concerns were raised. Objective.This paper examines the contexts and contents of EoCs published in the Financial Times 50 (FT50) journals, which are widely regarded as the most influential and respected in the fields of business and management. Methods and Result. A search using the Retraction Watch database revealed only three instances of EoCs in FT50 journals, with the oldest published in April 2015 and the latest in August 2021. A search on Clarivate’s Web of Science Core Collection indicated that the articles to which the three EoCs were associated have amassed together 581 citations by 22 November 2023. Examination of the content of these EoCs showed that they were prompted by a complaint, a university-led investigation, and a third party. This paper also sheds light on the contexts behind the issuance of these EoCs in these FT50 journals, while highlighting concerns about them. Contributions. This paper focuses on a type of scholarly document (i.e., EoC) that has received little attention within the library and information science literature.
Historical Assessment of Three Extinct Portable Peer Review and Cascade Peer Review Models Jaime A. Teixeira da Silva, J. A. LIBRES Volume 33, Issue 1 (2023), page 9-27
Abstract. Portable peer review (PPR) refers to peer review that is not conducted by a journal but instead by externally recruited peers whose reports are then made available to that journal’s editors. In theory, this would alleviate a journal editor’s responsibilities and potentially benefit authors by shortening the time to a decision. While the upside to this model is self-evident, PPR suffers from potential biases since knowledge by the reviewer that they will be paid may skew the outcome of peer review. In one form of PPR, cascade peer review (CPR), a rejected paper is passed down, or cascaded, often to a lower-tier journal within the same publisher’s journal fleet, usually accompanied by the rejected journal’s reviewer reports. CPR might be perceived as unfair to other authors who have passed a more standard route of rejection and resubmission to the same journal. For these reasons, papers that used either external PPR, or internal CPR, should transparently indicate this fact in both HTML and PDF versions of the paper so that an impression is not created that the authors, journal and publisher are concealing an important part of that paper’s publication history. Three experimental paid PPR services (Rubriq, Axios Review, and Peerage of Science) that have now ceased to exist are examined in detail to appreciate their potential weaknesses, allowing academics to learn possible pitfalls in PPR and CPR models. Three reasons might explain their failure and/or lack of adoption: 1) opacity of the use and acknowledgement of such services, thus being a potential ethical infraction; 2) the creation of a two-tier system that favors only well-funded authors who are able to pay for such an exclusive service; 3) risk of peer review bias.
