What is Peer Review?

WHAT IS PEER REVIEW? How do an author and a journal interact? How is a decision is made on individual articles submitted for consideration? This short video gives a quick overview of these topics as they relate to scholarly publishing.
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TRANSCRIPT:
Hi there. This is John Bond from Riverwinds Consulting and this is Publishing Defined.
Today I am going to be giving an overview of peer review.
Peer review, as I’ll be discussing today, relates to the scholarly review of an article for publication. I am mostly going to discuss it as relates to journals, but it also relates to books as well.
Peer review is the quality control measure a publisher or journal might take to determine what to publish. It is an essential step in furthering the research and the advancement in a particular field. Those publications that are not peer reviewed are held in lower esteem than those that are.
So how does peer review work? Typically, an author will choose a journal in their field they would like to consider. They will go to journal’s website and upload their manuscript, figures, tables; into an electronic review system.
From here, the journal staff or the editor will take over. They may do a pre-check of the material to see that it fits within the journal’s stated guidelines of the number of words, or the number of images, or the format that the manuscript is in. They may even dive into the content to see if it fits within the mission of the journal.
Remember to follow a journal’s stated guidelines closely; to save everyone time. If it doesn’t follow those guidelines or meet the requirements, then you may receive the article back with a letter stating why.
Let’s say it does follow the guidelines. The editor or the staff will assign it to peer reviewers. These reviewers may come from the editorial board, editorial review panel, or other experts that are familiar with that area. From that point, the reviewers will read the article very closely, and fill out a form that is personalized to that individual journal. They will make a recommendation of accept, accept with changes, revise, reject and they will pass that material back along to the staff or the editor.
Classically, there are three reviewers but there may be more or less depending on the individual journal. Once the editor receives the material back, the editor will look and review the decisions. If there three accepts or three accepts, the path is pretty clear. More likely the verdict is mixed. In which case, the editor would read the material and look at the reviews and make a decision.
If the decisions are far apart, then the editor may ask the reviewers some probing questions or go to an additional reviewer.
When a decision is finally made, the journal will go to the author and tell the author their decision. If the article is accepted, of course it will be edited, posted online and published. Or the decision may be revise, in which case the publisher will give the author specific or broad suggestions of what is to be changed. The author can consider these, potentially make the changes, and resubmit the manuscript and the process starts all over again. Or the decision might be reject, in which case the publisher might give comments back as to why the manuscript is being rejected. Either way the process is likely to be blind or anonymous to the individual author.
Peer review ensures quality. Publishing in a journal that embraces peer review means your work is more likely to be disseminated, downloaded, and have a greater number of citations. More on that later.
Well that’s it. Thank you very much for watching. Please subscribe to my KZbin channel or click here to see more videos on peer review. Thank you very much and take care.

[@michaelangelo9079]

I like your videos. Thanks for sharing.

[@JohnBond]

Thanks for watching!

[@bernardwatts5339]

The best way to deal with a request to peer review is not to reply. This discourages further pestering.

[@michaelangelo9079]

Do they at least pay the reviewers money for their work? Academia is such a pyramid scheme. Journals are taking our hard work and publishing it for their own profit, and they are making us pay for it.

[@JohnBond]

Thanks for the comment. The vast majority do not compensate for review. There has been a movement to change that, but it has been slow. Take care.