![\"anonymous\"](\"http:\/\/blogs.library.mcgill.ca\/schulich\/files\/2015\/11\/anonymous.jpg\")
<\/a>hat the journal peer review process was always double-blinded, i.e., the authors did not know who the reviewers of their manuscripts were and the reviewers, in turn, did not know who the authors were. I learned that some journals have a double-blinded peer review process while others have one-sided blinding, i.e., the authors do not know the names of their reviewers but the reviewers know who the authors are. Blinding on one side should not be a problem if the reviewers perform their task objectively and critically.<\/p>\nWhat are the responsibilities of a peer reviewer and author towards each other? This was a topic discussed in a \u201cCHEE 687: Research Skills and Ethics\u201d class, the content of which is summarized below.<\/p>\n
The peer reviewer should:<\/p>\n
- \n
- keep the contents of the grant application or manuscript confidential by not sharing it with others;<\/li>\n
- submit his\/her comments to the funding agency or journal editor within the allotted time;<\/li>\n
- refuse the assignment if there are any conflicts of interest that can bias his\/her assessment of the work;<\/li>\n
- not use any ideas or methods contained in the document (if relevant to his\/her own research) until after the reviewed researcher\u2019s work is published; and<\/li>\n
- conscientiously apply any evaluation criteria (supplied by the funding agency or journal editor) to the work being reviewed.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
After receiving comments from the reviewers and being invited to resubmit the manuscript, the authors should:<\/p>\n
- \n
- respond to each of the comments made by the reviewers with diplomacy and respect;<\/li>\n
- do some further work if additional experiments are requested, since just altering the text in the manuscript will not be enough in most of these cases;<\/li>\n
- be prepared to rewrite sentences or entire sections if the reviewers did not understand the purpose of the research; and<\/li>\n
- consider the reviewers\u2019 comments as an opportunity to improve the manuscript and make it the best it can be.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
The peer review process is not infallible (see Nature article<\/a><\/em> about peer review frauds as an example). However, when it is conducted correctly, I believe that peer review improves the quality of the submitted work before it is published.<\/p>\n
This is the third in a series<\/a> of weekly posts about topics relating to research skills and ethics. Stay tuned for the next post in the series, which will be about scientific misconduct and questionable authorship practices.<\/p>\n
Image from the Laugh-Out-Loud Cats<\/a> cartoon strip by Adam \u201cApe Lad\u201d Koford <\/em>(creative commons license<\/a>)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The peer review process is a method of assessing the quality of an individual (in the case of a grant application, for example) or evaluating the quality of a scholarly work (for instance, in the case of a journal article … Continue reading