28. June 2006 12:21
Call for papers: Prague conference on Peer Review - Its Present and Future State
Only few days are left to submit papers for a conference about one of the most current and urgent problems for the entire scientific community: „Peer Review - Its Present and Future State“. It takes place from October 12-13, 2006 in Prague, Czech Republic The deadline for submissions of papers is the 30th of June.
That there are problems in the evaluation of research is known to the scientific community at least since 20 years, when the first scholarly conference on peer review was announced.
Though the peer review itself has been examined using scientific methods, the scenery has changed considerably since then: The number of publications increased into the innumerable, open access is on the rise and oversubscriptions to funding opportunities pose a problem not only to the applicants.
In this situation the conference „Peer Review - Its Present and Future State“ will analyse contemporary trends in the evaluation of research, examine how the peer review process is understood and performed, and consider its future modifications in response to the requirements of research in the 21st century.
It is organised by the European Heads of Research Councils (EuroHORCs), together with the European Science Foundation (ESF) and the Czech Science Foundation.
The discussions will be centred arou
Assessment and selection of grant proposals;
Evaluation of institutions and programmes;
Peer review process in scientific publishing.
On the eve of the creation of the European Research Council the focus will be on peer review as performed in funding agencies and evaluation bodies. However, attention will also be paid to peer review in the process of publishing scientific results in journals.
Thus a number of sub-themes will be addressed:
Peer review in grant applications, evaluation of outline proposals, external reviewers and panel review, and problems of oversubscription;
Peer review in scientific journals, the role of editorial boards, electronic versus paper publication of results, and open access policies;
Evaluation of high-risk proposals and peer review of applications in interdisciplinary research;
Ethics in peer review and the transparency of the peer review process;
Public understanding of peer review and education of scientists in peer review.
The conference will bring together research policy makers and managers as well as experts in evaluation processes from Europe and from around the world. The list of invited speakers is quite impressive, but the organisers invite even more contributions, as this event touches a topic of crucial significance for the future credibility of science.
Submission and registration information can be found on the conference home page
Registrations will close automatically when 200 applications are received.
