Replies

• Maxine Clarke

  22 October 2007 | 08:16

  Here is the Nature journal’s peer-review page, which includes the editors’ advice about what makes a good review and lists the essential and desirable criteria.

  Nature runs a mentoring awards programme, the latest of which led a feature and to this editorial about good peer-review—there are several comments from readers, and, as ever, we welcome more. The Peer-to-Peer blog, our blog for peer-reviewers and about the peer-review process, regularly features correspondence and other discussion on the topic. There, you can find an archive of last year’s peer-review debate, in which 22 authors write about various aspects of how the internet is changing or could change peer-review. One of those articles is by the editors of the BMJ (previously called the British Medical Journal), and describes the journal’s formal training programme for peer reviewers—there are other articles about the quality, value and ethics of peer-review. The BMJ publishes interesting peer-review studies, to which you can navigate from Peer to Peer.

  There is an ask the Nature editor group on Nature Network, where we have been discussing peer-review in the forums – some of the comments there might be useful in this context.

• Pedro Beltrao

  22 October 2007 | 09:56

  It is such an important part of the scientific process that it should be formally taught. Journal clubs and alike prepare for some of the critical thinking necessary but until we start doing the reports it is hard to know exactly what is required. This is one advantage of open peer review (as in Biology Direct). One of the best ways to learn is by reading other reviewers that have more experience.
  Why don’t editors also provide some feedback to the referees ? Were the comments helpful ? In what way could they have been more informative ? etc.

  Also, it could be interesting to hear from experienced editors what constitutes a useful report and what are the typical pitfalls (asking to cite your own work, personal grudge, etc). This could be obvious but I don’t recall any journal that has guides to peer reviewing in their website.

• Deepak Singh

  22 October 2007 | 19:30

  I learnt the hard way, starting with reviewing papers for my advisor. Fortunately by the time I started getting requests myself, I had a decent idea how to do it.

  Pedro mentions an important point. Through the process (won’t mention the two journals I have mostly refereed for)I would have loved to find out what impact my review had other than responses from the authors to specific points.

• Maxine Clarke

  23 October 2007 | 10:38

  At Nature, all referees receive a notification from the editor of the final decision about the manuscript, together with copies of the other refereees’ reports. We get a lot of positive feedback from the referees about this.
  Pedro, you mention that it would be useful to hear from the editors about what makes a useful report: if you go to the first link in my reply above, this is the Nature journals’ peer review page, which links to exactly that, a list of what makes a good report. See “writing the review” and “other questions to consider” on this page
  Your feedback on this would be welcome—is this useful advice? Have we missed anything? How should we promote this page, as it is there, but evidently people are missing it! (We provide a link in our letter accompanying mansucripts sent to reviewers).

• Massimo Pinto

  06 November 2007 | 10:01

  The Radiation Research Society launched a mentored manuscript review program a few years ago to try and fill this educational vacuum within its trainees. The process of reviewing a paper is by no means trivial, but the necessary skills may well be mastered under an appropriate mentored program. Volunteer Associate Editors of the Journal Radiation Research as well as Lab PIs contributed by supervising would-be reviewers through the process.
  At a more local level, each lab/PI may have the responsibility to educate its trainees in the process of manuscript reviewing. In the end, it pays well, as a nice side effect is that trainees also learn how to write better manuscripts themselves.

• Rajneesh Gaur

  06 November 2007 | 22:04

  I certainly agree with pedro on teaching the art of manuscript writing. Here is a fantastic link to go through -

  http://www.jyi.org/resources/rs.php?id=320

  The fundamental problem is there is no money in the projects to offer such kind of courses to the trainees. It is true that in most cases PI does not even bother to give this oppertunity to the trainees but it is also a real fact that PI more often like the idea of editing the written manuscript but trainees lack the will to write the first draft. Another good reason for the trainee not to do is why to scratch your head when there is somebody to take care of it. In addition, every lab is in hurry to publish by segmenting the work type. Naturally, somebody is going to be deprived which he/she is supposed to get for carrer development. And who cares till the projects and publicaions are flowing in the laboratory. But such forums could be very useful to fulfill the vacuum.

• Maxine Clarke

  07 November 2007 | 10:16

  We’ve moved a bit away from peer-reviewing into writing. At Nature journals we provide writing advice and also links to some services at the author and reviewers’ website. One of the links is to the excellent website ScDevNet which has a whole area on science publishing advice for young scientists, written by editors and publishers of various top journals. But there are also links to online style guides, how to create a good web page, and a link to a free writing course. I hope you find it helpful!

• Joe Mittiga

  31 January 2008 | 05:31

  This content has been removed by the forum moderators.