You Too Should Peer Review

This is the time of year that I always receive a couple of thank you letters for performing the most thankless job ever: peer review. An integral part of the scientific publishing process, peer review should be a thorough evaluation of a scientific work by experts in a given field. In the perfect world, peer review should help to refine and sharpen good papers into great ones, and also weed out things that lack validity, relevance, or scientific rigor. In reality, this process, conducted by volunteers, is highly imperfect and the more we open curtain and allow better visibility to how peer review happens, we find criticism that is probably very justified.

That said, I am not writing this to point out the problems - if you want to read about that you can Google it and find volumes of reading material. I am writing this as an open letter to my colleagues to tell you that you can be part of the solution. Being involved in peer-review is usually as easy as raising your hand and identifying yourself as an expert. If you are unsure about your skills, you can take a course like the one offered by Clarivate (formerly Publons Academy) and quickly get familiar with what is expected of reviewers. Honestly, many of you already do peer review - you just do it on post-publication studies rather than pre-publication.

What should you do this? If you are ever finding yourself thinking "how did that get published?" or "why hasn't this been retracted?" or frankly "what were those peer reviewers smoking that they let this pass?" - then you should try your hand at peer review. You can do as much or as little as you want - it's voluntary. To participate in this activity is to contribute to upholding the integrity of the scientific process, and you can choose to be an armchair critic or a real critic. Do you ever feel that your particular branch of science or medicine doesn't get treated fairly in journals - then do peer review. In scientific circles, opinions are often anchored in the published studies that can be cited - you can have a positive influence on that.

I've been doing peer review for about a decade now. I primarily review for 2 surgical journals based on my unique expertise in nutrition an bariatric surgery, but occasionally I am asked to do a review for something else. Last year I did 4 reviews - some years I do more, others less. It's not a huge commitment, but it really feels good to do it. If you think you might want to be involved, but don't know where to start, drop me a note and I'll try to point you in the right direction.