Wikipedia:Scientific peer review
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
This page concerns the peer review of science articles on Wikipedia. It aims to offer a high-calibre, content-oriented critique of articles on scientific subjects. Peer review is one of the most important tools on Wikipedia. Over the past few months we have been under the spotlight over our accuracy, receiving reviews from newspapers and academic journals. Nature deemed us, on scientific articles, as error-laden as Britannica. Wikipedia has now matured from a small intellectual exercise into a serious and respectable source of information. As such, we are trying to find ways in which our articles can provide reliable information to the public—the process for Wikipedia 1.0 and a validation feature are just beginning. From now on, we must do our best to ensure that as many articles as possible, especially our scientific articles, are factually accurate and of a high standard.
The primary objective is to encourage better articles by having contributors who may not have worked on articles, and in particular for editors who are experts in the topic involved, to examine them and provide ideas for further improvement.
The peer review process is highly flexible and can deal with articles of any quality; however, requesting reviews on very short articles may not be productive, as there is little for readers to comment on.
All reviews are conducted by fellow editors—usually members of one of the many Science WikiProjects. While there is a general intent to expand this process to ensure review by subject experts in a more formal way, possibly through the use of an elected Board, consensus on how to achieve this has not been reached.
The process here resembles the Wikipedia:Peer review process. Indeed it has been suggested that we work in part through that process, but this is something for the future. A special page, such as Wikipedia:Scientific peer review/Science is created to collect the review comments. Interested participants scan the notice board, and participate in the reviews of articles in which they are interested. This mechanism builds on proven and successful WP methods for handling and managing requests.
Related pages:
- Wikipedia:Peer review.
- Wikipedia:External peer review deals with peer reviews by external agencies.
- Wikipedia:Article assessment rates articles from a particular topic.
- Wikipedia:CVG Peer review deals with computer and video games-related topics.
- Military history Peer Review deals with their articles in a similar way to this proposal.
- The discussion page for SPR methodology and philosophy of scientific peer review
[edit] Nomination procedure
Anyone can request peer review here. Note that this review process is intended for articles that are reasonably stable, although they might be quite short; it is not for resolving disputes about content.
- Procedure for adding nominations:
- Place {{scipeerreview}} at the top of the article's talk page (not the article itself) to let other editors of the article know that the article is being peer reviewed.
- From there, click on the link request has been made that appears in the new "peer review" box. This will open a page to discuss the review of your article. Please add a title in the format "===Article name===" and include a brief description of the kind of comments/contributions you want, and sections of the article you think need to be reviewed. The best way to get lots of reviews is to reply promptly and appreciatively on the article's review page to the comments you do get. Sign off your request by adding ~~~~ at the end.
- Click on "Edit here" just above the heading "Scientific Peer Review - Recent requests for review" below. Edit the sub-page that appears to place:-
[[name of nominated article]] - [[Wikipedia:Scientific peer review/name of nominated article|Discussion]]
at the top of the list of nominees found on that page.
- (Optional) Politely request feedback on the discussion pages of one or more articles in the same or a related field, related Wikiprojects, and/or send messages to one or more individual Wikipedians who have contributed to the same or a closely related field who are not on the board. Note that notice of the review will automatically be included in the main page of the various Science Wikiprojects.
- Scan the list of requests below, and if one catches your fancy, follow the link to the article and read it. If you think something is wrong with the article — for example, it is too long, the lead is unsatisfactory, or there is poor writing or factual error — you are welcome to post a comment in the section on this page. While we hope for expert comment, anyone is free to help.
- If you have the time and knowledge to resolve relatively minor issues in the article itself, this will be appreciated. If you do, please consider making a note of this on the page to keep others informed about the progress of the article.
- To comment on an article, please add a new section (using ==== [[User:Your name|Your name]] ====) for your comments, in order to keep multiple responses legible.
[edit] Scientific Peer Review - Recent requests for review
This is a list of articles that have been nominated for scientific peer review. i.e. by scientists with expertise in the topic. Please contribute by adding new requests at the top of this list:
- Francium - Discussion
- Equipartition theorem - Discussion
- Cerebral hypoxia - Discussion
- Vitamin C - Discussion
- Relative density - Discussion
- Bates method - Discussion
- Earl Mindell - Discussion
- Sudden Oak Death - Discussion
- Process physics - Discussion
then add {{scipeerreview}} to the top of the talk page of the article you want reviewing and add a good description of what you want out of the review on the discussion page. Do not add the article separately to peer review. This will be done later in such a way that both refer to the same discussion page.
See Wikipedia:WikiProject Chemistry/Peer review for some related reviews.
Reviews of articles that have been nominated for review and the review completed are archived here.
[edit] Completed reviews
When the review is completed the proceedure is:
- Change {{scipeerreview}} on the article's talk page to {{oldscipeerreview}}
- Edit the list above at Wikipedia:Scientific peer review/recent reviews to remove the line referring to the review and add it to Wikipedia:Scientific peer review/archived reviews
Note both of these steps are important. The first removes the article from Category:Requests for scientific peer review and adds it to Category:Old requests for scientific peer review. The second makes it easy to access the old reviews from the link above on this page.
