Conflict Of Interest In Peer Review:an Overview Of Structural Functionalism

Peer review is in the social context, and a component of the whole social system, at the same time is an independent system for itself. The whole system of peer review and its parts have position in the social system and its internal system, have multiple relations and links between different levels of society nodes, each part plays the corresponding utility, mutual cooperation, so as to promote the normal operation of the whole system. This paper takes an important theory of sociology with an overview of structural functionalism, constructs structure of peer review system, analyzes its function, and taps the origin of the conflict of interest.Peer review system is generalized in this paper, mainly formed by the external environment system and internal system (system of peer review in narrow sense), its relationship is mutual support. The external environment system includes government administrative departments and social economic organizations, the relationship between them is the service and support; internal system is divided into evaluation organization, evaluation experts, evaluation object according to the participants, the appraisal object submits applications to evaluation organization, evaluation organization directly commissions experts, experts comments judgment, thus, forms the closed ring of principal-agent relationship between the three.Peer review system as a whole plays adaptation, goal attainment, integration, latency pattern maintenance functions, the four basic functions are implemented by the economic system, political system, the social community system, cultural system, and continue to maintain the overall balance of system. Within the system, three parts have manifest and latent functions, which manifest function as the main body, specifically:manifest function of evaluation organization is the organization and research of evaluation results, release and spread the evaluation results; manifest function of experts is to make objective scientific evaluation judgment; manifest function of evaluation object is to make the research results, provides the core object for the peer review system.The conflict of interest in peer review system is generated by three reasons:structure imbalance of the peer review system, function deviation of peer review system, reviewers’social attributes of its own limitations. Its prevention is the following aspects:first, the balance of the structure relationship, status and authority between internal and external system, internal system of each part; second, standard function of peer review system through the cultural system, the legal system; third, formulate a scientific selection standard for expert, expand the expert database.