Becoming a Good Peer Reviewer
Peer review plays an important role in academic publishing, giving authors of research papers a validation of their work and providing readers with reliable, high-quality content.…
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Understanding Reviews
Helpful tips on peer review and journal rejection
Can Peer Review Training Help Graduate Students Improve Their Writing Skills?
Whenever we submit a manuscript to a good journal, it is carefully scrutinized by the editors and other experts in the field before being accepted. We all know how important this…
Writing a Good Referee Report
Peer review is a crucial part of scholarly communication. During this process, authors ideally receive helpful comments on the significance and novelty of their work as well as…
Are Published Peer Review Reports Beneficial?
Although academic journal publishing has been around since the 17th century, the concept of the peer review system is relatively new as traditional peer review was only established…
5 Effective Tips for Writing a Good Academic Rebuttal Letter
An academic rebuttal letter can be a great chance to convince referees and editors that your paper is good and should be published in that journal. Often, it is your last…
Results-free Peer Review: A New Way to Evaluate Manuscripts?
Does reviewing a paper without seeing its results actually help referees make a fairer decision? The open access journal BMC Psychology, published by BioMed Central, certainly…
Computer-aided Peer Review: How Automation Might Influence Academic Publishing
You may have probably heard about fake papers that made it into peer-reviewed publications over the past few years, but now even fake peer reviews are being generated. A group of…
Surviving a Bad Peer Review
So the reviewers’ comments have come in and they aren’t good. Not terrible, but negative enough that the editor has requested a response before making a decision on publication.…
Why Is Double-Blind Peer Review Bad for Publishing?
In experimental science double-blind testing is the standard procedure. To avoid bias it is important that neither the subject nor the evaluator knows which pills are the potential…
Rejection without Peer Review: Issues and Solutions
A fact that is not very widely known or universally accepted by authors is that manuscripts may be rejected without the due and expected peer review process. While manuscripts have…
How Should the Performance of Peer Reviewers be Assessed?
Serving Two Masters
Which elements should be considered as a metric for performance as a good peer reviewer? If we look at the process from the perspective of the manuscript, a…
Should Peer Reviewers Sign a Code of Ethics?
Increased Scrutiny of a Critical Process:
A Google search for “peer review best practices” will produce over 5,600 results, with numerous examples of detailed manuals and…