As a researcher, you are responsible for protecting the public from false scientific reports and findings. Being the flag-holders of science, research, and development, it’s your duty to ensure that whatever the output is being supplied by the R&D sector to the country is accurate, legitimate, and is in the benefit of the general public. False reports, fabricated results, and poor research communications may lead to high losses to the concerned and also degrade the quality of research. A solid, unbiased, and scientific peer-review process is necessary to curb this failure of the science community.
Peer reviewing is the process through which the overall quality of submitted research articles is scrutinized by experts in the concerned field of research. It ensures that work has been reported correctly complying with the said guidelines. Peer reviewers, on one hand, assist editorial decisions regarding the acceptance or rejection of an article and on the other hand, contribute in improving the quality of papers by asking for revisions in the manuscripts. You being the budding researchers may contribute to the peer review process significantly.
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Ifs and Buts with Peer Review?
By now several questions must have started floating your brain. Like
- How will this benefit my career?
- Why do I waste my time in peer-reviewing when I have lots of work to do already?
- Will it be okay to get started with peer reviewing so early?
- I am just the beginner, am I really eligible?
- Will my supervisor allow me?
- What if I made him/her angry?
And so many ifs and buts…
Benefits of Peer review
- Well, you don’t get paid for peer-reviewing, even the scientists don’t. It’s just the way of giving back to the scientific community.
- Although benefits here can’t be described in monetary terms, peer-reviewing can be very helpful for your research career. It will help you in improving your critical thinking and communication skills.
- You will learn how to prepare a good manuscript, what must be added in it essentially and what must be avoided. You will understand the mindset of a reviewer…and learn to prepare the manuscript accordingly.
- It will let you know the current research being done in your field of study, what methodologies are being adopted, what problems are being addressed, and hence will keep you up to date.
- Also, it will also improve your profile in terms of the number of research articles peer-reviewed and will prove useful for your career.
Isn’t it too early?
No, it’s not. Being a Ph.D. student, you must learn this art. You must contribute to this process. You are a part of the scientific community. Ph.D. students are an asset to the scientific community and most of the research that is published comes from them. Hence you are no less and can start contributing to it. You don’t need a doctorate to be an expert in the field. Despite the less experienced in the field as compared to your supervisor or senior scientists, your young perspective may land greater insight into the facts that may not be looked upon or discovered by the senior ones. It happens many times..please don’t underestimate yourself. This will also guide you ahead when preparing manuscripts thereby improving the submitted content itself as a positive feedback loop.
How to learn to Peer Review
Learning to write a constructive peer review is the first step towards this endeavor. Many peer review training courses are available online. A few of them are listed below:
- Publons Academy
- Elseveir Research Academy
- Nature masterclasses
- Course offered by Editage insights
- ACS reviewer Lab
- Peer reiew Training by Wiley
- EQUATOR netework
- EASE
How do I get to Peer Review a paper?
If you are going to read it further you must be thinking of reviewing the one!! Now the question that strikes the mind is “How do I get to peer review a paper?” You may ask your supervisor to get you involved in the next article heshe is going to review. There are several other ways like a Reviewer Recognition Platform that has been created by Elsevier since September 2015 enabling reviewers to volunteer their services for particular journals such as JMB and many others. This way you can deploy your valuable knowledge on a journal with the familiar subject matter.
You can register them with a simple form and get your areas of expertise registered. On doing so you will start getting alerts regarding the peer review requests of manuscripts matching your profile. You can respond to the entry of your choice and the manuscript will be sent to you by the editor on a first come first served basis and review is awaited. After the review has been submitted by you, feedback is sent to you by the reviewer using the Review Quality Instrument method, and the reviewer is also invited to give their feedback on the overall process.
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