Gaming the peer review system: Evidence for a review mill in medicine highlights the need to ensure reviewer integrity.

IF 4.4 1区哲学 Q1 MEDICAL ETHICS

Accountability in Research-Policies and Quality Assurance Pub Date : 2026-08-01 Epub Date: 2026-03-05 DOI:10.1080/08989621.2026.2640012

M Ángeles Oviedo-García, René Aquarius, Dorothy V M Bishop

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引用次数: 0

Abstract

Background: Review mills are recognized when individuals generate numerous generic review reports, typically containing suggestions for citations to their own work. Here, we report a network with characteristics of a review mill in the field of gynecological oncology.

Methods: Our search started with a review that contained "boilerplate" comments as well as suggestions that specific PubMed IDs be cited. We searched the internet using Google for review reports using the same boilerplate comments. We coded text to quantify similarities between reviews and compiled citations suggested by reviewers. For comparison, we analyzed 59 reviews of the same articles by other peer reviewers.

Results: We identified a network of 195 review reports that shared boilerplate text from 170 articles. One hundred and eighty-six reports suggested citing articles coauthored by a member of the network. Five members of the network had editorial roles. Authors of 142 articles complied with suggestions for citation. Boilerplate text and citation recommendations were rare in the comparison reports.

Conclusions: Review mills lead to articles being published without proper peer review. This is of particular concern in medical research. Open peer review and transparent reporting of the editors responsible for handling papers will make it easier to detect review mills.

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玩弄同行评议制度：医学界存在评议作坊的证据凸显了确保评议人诚信的必要性。

背景：当个人生成大量通用的审查报告时，审查工厂就被认可了，这些报告通常包含对自己工作的引用建议。在这里，我们报告了一个具有妇科肿瘤领域审查工厂特征的网络。方法：我们的搜索从包含“样板”评论以及引用特定PubMed id的建议的综述开始。我们使用谷歌在互联网上搜索使用相同样板评论的审查报告。我们对文本进行编码，以量化审稿人和审稿人建议的编译引用之间的相似性。为了比较，我们分析了其他同行审稿人对同一篇文章的59篇评论。结果：我们确定了195篇综述报告的网络，这些综述报告共享来自170篇文章的样板文本。有186份报告建议引用该网络成员合著的文章。该网络的五名成员担任编辑职务。142篇文章的作者遵守了引用建议。样板文本和引用建议在比较报告中很少见。结论：评议作坊导致文章在没有适当的同行评议的情况下发表。这在医学研究中尤其值得关注。公开的同行评议和负责处理论文的编辑的透明报告将更容易发现审稿作坊。

本文章由计算机程序翻译，如有差异，请以英文原文为准。

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来源期刊

Accountability in Research-Policies and Quality Assurance MEDICAL ETHICS-

CiteScore

4.90

自引率

14.70%

发文量

审稿时长

>12 weeks

期刊介绍： Accountability in Research: Policies and Quality Assurance is devoted to the examination and critical analysis of systems for maximizing integrity in the conduct of research. It provides an interdisciplinary, international forum for the development of ethics, procedures, standards policies, and concepts to encourage the ethical conduct of research and to enhance the validity of research results. The journal welcomes views on advancing the integrity of research in the fields of general and multidisciplinary sciences, medicine, law, economics, statistics, management studies, public policy, politics, sociology, history, psychology, philosophy, ethics, and information science. All submitted manuscripts are subject to initial appraisal by the Editor, and if found suitable for further consideration, to peer review by independent, anonymous expert referees.