Connect
MJA
MJA

Democratising assessment of researchers’ track records: a simple proposal

Simon Chapman, Gemma E Derrick, Abby S Haynes and Wayne D Hall
Med J Aust 2011; 195 (3): . || doi: 10.5694/j.1326-5377.2011.tb03243.x
Published online: 1 August 2011

How to ensure a better match between grant applicant and reviewer expertise

All researchers have experienced dismay at the failings of peer review.1,2 These include cursory or ill informed reviews from those apparently unschooled in applicants’ disciplines and with superficial understanding of the quality and significance of proposals, publications and achievements being described by aspiring applicants.


  • 1 Sydney School of Public Health, University of Sydney, Sydney, NSW.
  • 2 School of Medicine, University of Queensland, Brisbane, QLD.


Correspondence: Simon.Chapman@sydney.edu.au

Acknowledgements: 

Our project was supported by National Health and Medical Research Council Project Grant No. 570870.

Competing interests:

None relevant to this article declared (ICMJE disclosure forms completed).

  • 1. Glantz SA, Bero LA. Inappropriate and appropriate selection of “peers” in grant review. JAMA 1994; 272: 114-116.
  • 2. Weber EJ, Katz PP, Waeckerle JF, Callaham ML. Author perception of peer review. Impact of review quality and acceptance on satisfaction. JAMA 2002; 287: 2790-2793.
  • 3. Chapman S, Hayen A. Reviewer refusal rates for 300 866 requested reviews in 20 BMJ Group journals. University of Sydney: Sydney eScholarship Repository, 2011. http://hdl.handle.net/2123/7462 (accessed Jun 2011).
  • 4. Derrick GE, Hall WD, Haynes AS, et al. Challenges in assessing the characteristics of influential public health research [preprint]. University of Sydney: Sydney eScholarship Repository, 2011. http://ses.library.usyd.edu.au/handle/2123/6116 (accessed Jun 2011).
  • 5. Haynes AS, Derrick GE, Chapman S, et al. From “our world” to the “real world”: exploring the views and behaviour of policy-influential Australian public health researchers. Soc Sci Med 2011; 72: 1047-1055.
  • 6. Derrick GE, Haynes A, Chapman S, Hall WD. The association between four Citation metrics and peer rankings of research influence of Australian researchers in six fields of public health. PLoS ONE 2011; 6: e18521.
  • 7. Bornmann L, Mutz R, Daniel HD. Are there better indices for evaluation purposes than the h index? A comparison of nine different variants of the h index using data from biomedicine. J Am Soc Inf Sci Technol 2008; 59: 830-837.
  • 8. Burrell QL. Hirsch’s h-index: a stochastic model. J Informetr 2007; 1: 16-25.
  • 9. Cabrerizo FJ, Alonso S, Herrera-Viedma E, Herrera F. q2-Index: quantitative and qualitative evaluation based on the number and impact of papers in the Hirsch core. J Informetr 2010; 4: 23-28.
  • 10. Hirsch JE. An index to quantify an individual’s scientific research output. Proc Nat Acad Sci USA 2005; 102: 16569-16572.

Author

remove_circle_outline Delete Author
add_circle_outline Add Author

Comment
Do you have any competing interests to declare? *

I/we agree to assign copyright to the Medical Journal of Australia and agree to the Conditions of publication *
I/we agree to the Terms of use of the Medical Journal of Australia *
Email me when people comment on this article

Online responses are no longer available. Please refer to our instructions for authors page for more information.