Hello!

In the last post, I shared my experience with peer-reviewing of an original research article from an author’s perspective. Although it can be a lengthy process, I valued the feedback received, and I am confident it improved the quality of the manuscript. However, to receive any comments in the first place, authors must rely on the other vital element of peer review, which are the editors and reviewers. Reviewers volunteer some time to assess manuscripts in their area of expertise, sent by editors of journals who match submitted manuscripts with suitable researchers in the field that can provide a knowledgeable evaluation of the work. Unexpectedly, I recently had the chance to collaborate with my supervising professor on an invitation he received to review a paper. The manuscript focused on a topic where I have supported previous work in our group and was also an opportunity to learn more about this side of peer reviewing. Therefore, in this post, I would like to expand on some of the takeaways I collected from this experience.

1. Sympathetic initial assessment

2. Distil major and minor comments

3. Discuss evaluation with more experienced researchers

Sympathetic initial assessment

Submissions typically include the main manuscript file, separate files with each figure panel, and additional documents with supplementary materials. Some have argued that figure panels should guide the story of the manuscript, and, as a preparation for reading the manuscript text, I followed this concept to get a glimpse of the study. Seemingly straightforward, a preliminary analysis of figure panels can help narrow the focus of the research, the methods used, and the density of the work, depending on how many panels and sub-figures are present. Indeed, a similar approach is beneficial when performing a literature review, except that no feedback needs to be provided at the end.

After collecting a first impression of the study, we can analyse the manuscript in more detail. For me, it helped to put myself in the scenario of a co-author or colleague who had been asked to review a manuscript before submission. In this way, I could better identify points of improvement as I went through the manuscript. Submitted manuscripts are usually line numbered, and while reading, I would write notes on each line or sentence where I had comments. These could range from minor typos to missing references or debatable statements. Ultimately, this initial evaluation culminated in a list of items per section that reflected a detailed view of the study.

Distil major and minor comments

From a reviewer’s standpoint, the goal is to understand if the manuscript provides a meaningful contribution of scientific knowledge and is presented in a clear, structured way that other researchers can follow and leverage in future studies. Therefore, having collected a thorough list of notes on the study, the next step is to identify which ones reflect major and minor comments. Often, major comments reflect topics that require considerable time to improve, while minor comments would include typos and small clarifications. Crucially, it is critical to understand if such major comments can be addressed or if they reveal underlying flaws with the study that would question the validity of the results. For example, while the former could consist of missing the discussion relevant literature, the latter could include contradictory remarks or statements not supported by the results.

Authors will generally receive reviewer comments, regardless of the decision to accept or reject the manuscript for publication. Therefore, even in the case of an unfavourable decision, I believe it is still essential to provide detailed feedback that can help the authors produce an improved version of the manuscript.

Discuss evaluation with more experienced researchers

At last, I had the opportunity to discuss my evaluation of the manuscript with my professor. Coincident with the type of tasks we perform predominantly regularly, my evaluation focused more on the technical execution and descriptions provided in each section, while his was oriented towards the study design and scientific questions the study aimed to answer. Indeed, an initial recommendation from my professor was to skim through previous work of the group to understand in which journals they had published before, for a broad indication of the impact of work they produced, as well as to identify if some of the comments we collected in our reports could reflect a systematic trend already present before. Without losing sight of the goal of providing a review report for the manuscript, I felt that such a discussion also helped me grow scientifically by understanding my professor’s viewpoints on the essential details that should be addressed to support the outcome of different steps of the experiments. While we also have such debates concerning our own work, the fact that we were assessing external work enabled a more unbiased viewpoint. Eventually, we could identify several points that we had not necessarily considered separately in our initial evaluations, as well as items that the authors had already overlooked in previous work.

In this case, it was my professor who received the invitation to review the work and, therefore, had the responsibility for deciding whether to support the publication of the work. Still, our discussion revealed an alignment in our evaluation and produced a detailed report that could support such a decision. Ultimately, the journal editor could consider such a report to provide the final decision on this manuscript.

Conclusion

With this experience, it became clear that being a reviewer can also be demanding, especially as the number of manuscripts increases considerably. As reviewers volunteer their time, ensuring they can provide sufficient and attentive feedback to each reviewed manuscript can be challenging. Still, I enjoyed this opportunity, and I am excited for the next chance to review another manuscript.

Please feel free to share your thoughts on peer reviewing!

Have a great day!