How to perform peer reviews for scholarly research articles?

Peer evaluation is the process of assessing work by peers in a scientific, systematic and judicious manner. The basis of such evaluations is rooted in the very fundamentals of scientific discussion, fact-checking and cooperation. This evaluation leads to the collective enrichment of knowledge in that subject field. It is expected that fair evaluation will improve the quality of a manuscript and make it more acceptable and understandable to the general reader.

Based on my own experience reviewing manuscripts and discussions with other fellow reviewers and editors, provided below are 15 points on how to review a research article. 

Before accepting a peer review assignment:

1. Background check on the inviting journal/press: Read the invite carefully. While people are familiar with standard journals/presses and open to accept their invites to review articles, there are hundreds of journals with similar-looking titles, many of which are predatory who aggressively communicate, inviting scholars to publish or review for them. To confirm, it is advised to use Beall’s list (https://beallslist.weebly.com) that contains a list of such predatory journals. This list is updated regularly and is a useful resource to confirm the authenticity of the journals.

2. Check the authors' credentials: This is the second most important step before accepting the invite to review. A short history check gives a lot of background information about authors that help to make a decision. This is in records that authors have tried to publish similar, duplicate or equivalent studies in different journals. Searching authors' publications and affiliation, not only provide information about their previous publications but also confirms the area of their expertise and overall vision towards research.

3. Carefully read the abstract: With the invite to review, usually an abstract or a link to abstract is provided. It is advised to read the abstract carefully and identify the keywords in the text. If the abstract contains more than a certain number of unfamiliar key words, probably this will be better not to accept the invitation. However, editors are generally aware of the reviewer’s expertise and their selection of a reviewer is sometimes not based on immediate skills but on the general perception of the reviewer towards the overall field of interest.

4. Assess your abilities to understand the subject: The abstract itself is sufficient for the invited scholar to identify whether or not he/she should review the manuscript. This is obvious to expect that the article may not be directly related to reviewer’s area of interest/expertise, yet he/she must find the overlap for the reasons; (1) Assessment of an article is the responsibility that a reviewer accept based on his knowledge, skills and experience and (2) It is a time taking process, and he should be benefitted by spending his time analyzing the article and preparing the report.

5. Time: With the emergence of open access online journals, scholarly publishing has become far more rapid than it used to be. Interestingly, the peer review process still remains slow in comparison with other steps associated with publications. Journals are becoming ‘pushy’ with time in terms of receiving review reports from experts and often aggressively communicate if deadlines are approaching, or over. While participating in peer review processes is an obligation, scholars must keep their research and teaching preferences on top.

During manuscript assessment:

1. Introduction-Discussions: Among several manners to review an article, the most convenient is to read the introduction and then immediately read the discussions section. Ideally, the hypothesis and claims that authors make in introductions should directly be reflected and discussed in discussions. Another advantage of this approach is that the introduction and discussion sections are written in a simpler language without including complex data, or the detailed experimental processes. That makes it easier to understand the whole take-home message of the articles quickly before getting into details of each and every experiment.

2. Data, Figures, and Legends: Once a broad idea about the study is acquired by reading introduction and discussions, this is convenient to understand the results. A careful analysis of results with the help of figure-legends and an attempt to correlate them in form of a story is always helpful. The manuscripts are structured in a way that experiments follow to answer the immediate questions raised from the previous experiment. Identifying the missing experiment(s) that could have helped to connect the dots and suggesting them to the authors (if required) help to build an affirmative and constructive review report.

3. Experimental Procedures: Experimental procedures are the fundamental requirements for the reproducibility of the results and the study. Methods should be provided with details. This is the general practice that authors refer to previous studies for procedures. This practice however useful but sometimes misleading if the referred article too doesn’t provide the procedures in detail. Another point that has to be taken care of, is the specification of reagents/chemicals including make, brand, catalog numbers and source of the item. This is in the record that properties of several reagents including antibodies vary from one source to another. In the absence of specification of items, the reproducibility of the data cannot be ensured.

4. Plagiarism: The very common problem with the scholarly publications is plagiarism. While standard journals maintain the ways to avoid plagiarized text in their articles, there are journals that mostly rely on their reviewers to consult them on this. This is impossible for a reviewer to check pages of text for plagiarism, but figures/data can be checked for any duplication- intentional or intentional. To some extent, plagiarism has been minimized by using proofreaders or language experts that (1) improve the structure and language of the articles, especially from the authors whose first language is not English, (2) can cross-check the originality of text through various search engines, and (3) confirm there is no duplication of text including from author’s previous publications.

5. Citations to the literature: Major discoveries discussed in the article must refer to the original articles. Authors are responsible in terms of proving credit to the peers yet if it is found that certain key references are missing especially in the discussions section, this is better to request authors to provide precise references. This is highly objectionable practice for a reviewer to suggest authors to cite his own papers. Such actions not only compromise the reviewer’s reputation but also the confidentiality of the process. Journals may flag reviewers for such comments that will affect their next assignments as a reviewer or submitting authors with the same journals.

Writing the reviewer’s report:

1. Know your limits: As a reviewer, an expert has been invited to provide an assessment on the submitted manuscript, which is a very important component of the peer review process, not the process itself. This must never be confused with the authority to control the fate of the submitted article or to aim at authors for personal/irrelevant reasons. It’s the editor who takes a decision on a manuscript; later the proofreaders and technical experts supervise the presentability of the published article. It is better to focus on the scientific soundness of the study rather than underlining the list of editorial mistakes to authors. Standard journals these days provide this option to reviewers to exclude themselves from the language correction part and instruct authors to get their manuscript proofread by independent/journal’s experts before publication. In a nutshell, emphasis should be given to improve the scholarly value, credibility, and reproducibility of the report’s findings, and let the editor and his team take care of the rest.

2. Understand the responsibility: Manuscript evaluation is the assessment process by contemporary scholars, with equivalent or higher authorities in the subject field. Cooperatively this process is not one-directional, as the authors submitting the manuscripts will also get the opportunity to evaluate the studies by the serving reviewer, for the same or other journals. This underlines peer review as a collective responsibility of contemporary scholars regardless of their personal or academic interests/conflicts. A professional approach is required, including the time management that is very critical to the authors who sometimes have been trying to publish that study for months or might want to get that study published to apply for grant proposals. With the introduction of online systems like Editorial Manager, editors can track reviewer’s timeline to provide review reports. This data provides significant information to the editors before selecting a reviewer as it is crucial to be punctual both for the journal and the author.

3. Respect the efforts behind a research article: Not every study is meant to be published, or to be published in the same journal where authors are trying. Authors definitely want to publish at a better platform to disseminate their work and to achieve that sometimes claim far-reaching conclusions. It is better to focus on the quality of the study and its potential to the field. In case, if the article doesn’t qualify on the journal’s criteria, major revision or even rejection may be suggested without criticizing the authors' decision to submit the article to the journal. This is to remember that the article is initially screened by editor and a reviewer’s duty is to provide an opinion, not judgment. In the reviewer’s report, the language must be respectful and scientific. Editors prefer reviewers who provide constructive criticism and help improve the outreach of the study. It is good to highlight the merits of the article and suggest authors on what else is required from the reviewer’s point of view.

4. Add a separate note to the editor if required: Standard journals provide this option to write separately and privately to the editor about any concerns for the article. Scholarly presses understand that not every comment can be forwarded to the authors, so this internal communication is meant to maintain the confidentiality of the process. Such communications, however, not generally practiced are the direct source to report concerns with the study, plagiarism, manipulation, fabrications or other serious issues to the editor.

5. Draft review report considerately: The review report has to be precise and clear. A reviewer must check the report for the errors before submitting it. Also, the report must read from the authors' perspective before submission; is the message the reviewer is trying to forward clear? While standard journals provide detailed guidelines on drafting a peer review report, certain journals trust reviewers to be professional, meticulous and detailed oriented. This is always nice to start a review report by providing an abstract on the article, praising the authors' efforts on the merits of the study and then providing point to point assessment/criticism on paper’s outline, quality of data, experimental procedures, discussions and finally on the conclusions. The report must be based on facts and the criticism/analysis should always be targeting the submitted article, never the authors. This is very common to find far-reaching conclusions that authors have made, and a reviewer must comment on them. Editors normally invited 2 or more reviewers for opinions, that often include not only the expert of the field but also the general reviewer to have different perspectives. This is the editor’s responsibility to consider all invited opinions collectively or give weight to one from the experts.  

[Saurabh Srivastava is a postdoctoral scholar at the University of California San Diego. He acquired more than 12 years of research experience in the multidisciplinary fields of Sialic acid biology, Peptide-based antibiotic approaches, and Prion neurodegeneration, resulting in probe developments, lead-molecule generations, and studies on pathophysiological mechanisms. He published several research articles in prestigious journals and reviewed 100+ manuscripts for internationally circulated PubMed indexed journals. His current interests are sialic acid-binding proteins and other small molecules.]