To publish or perish: how to review a manuscript

'Scholarly peer reviewing': The art, its joys and woes

Research and publications are an important part of academics. Nowadays, there is an increasing trend amongst professionals including anaesthesiologists to submit scientific articles to journals for publication. Most journals are peer-reviewed which means that the articles they publish go through the peer review process. Peer review is carried out for assessing the inadequacies of research and manuscript preparation so that the best papers are published in a journal. Although peer review is a key part of the process for the publishing of medical research, there are some limitations in the system. Keeping this in mind, all aspects of peer reviewing were searched from books and journals for full text from PubMed and Google search. The information so gathered is presented in this article which focuses on the general aspects of the peer review process.

Are peer reviewers encouraged to use reporting guidelines? A survey of 116 health research journals

Background

Pre-publication peer review of manuscripts should enhance the value of research publications to readers who may wish to utilize findings in clinical care or health policy-making. Much published research across all medical specialties is not useful, may be misleading, wasteful and even harmful. Reporting guidelines are tools that in addition to helping authors prepare better manuscripts may help peer reviewers in assessing them. We examined journals' instructions to peer reviewers to see if and how reviewers are encouraged to use them.

Methods

We surveyed websites of 116 journals from the McMaster list. Main outcomes were 1) identification of online instructions to peer reviewers and 2) presence or absence of key domains within instructions: on journal logistics, reviewer etiquette and addressing manuscript content (11 domains).

Findings

Only 41/116 journals (35%) provided online instructions. All 41 guided reviewers about the logistics of their review processes, 38 (93%) outlined standards of behaviour expected and 39 (95%) contained instruction about evaluating the manuscript content. There was great variation in explicit instruction for reviewers about how to evaluate manuscript content. Almost half of the online instructions 19/41 (46%) mentioned reporting guidelines usually as general statements suggesting they may be useful or asking whether authors had followed them rather than clear instructions about how to use them. All 19 named CONSORT for reporting randomized trials but there was little mention of CONSORT extensions. PRISMA, QUOROM (forerunner of PRISMA), STARD, STROBE and MOOSE were mentioned by several journals. No other reporting guideline was mentioned by more than two journals.

Conclusions

Although almost half of instructions mentioned reporting guidelines, their value in improving research publications is not being fully realised. Journals have a responsibility to support peer reviewers. We make several recommendations including wider reference to the EQUATOR Network online library (www.equator-network.org/).

Reviewing the review process: Identifying sources of delay

BACKGROUND

The process of manuscript review is a central part of scientific publishing, but has increasingly become the subject of criticism, particularly for being difficult to manage, slow, and time consuming - all of which contribute to delaying publication.

AIMS

To identify potential sources of delays during manuscript review by examining the review process, and to identify and propose constructive strategies to reduce time spent on the review process without sacrificing journal quality.

METHOD

Sixty-seven manuscripts published in the Australasian Medical Journal (AMJ) were evaluated in terms of duration of peer review, number of times manuscripts were returned to authors, time authors spent on revision per review round, manuscripts containing grammatical errors reviewers deemed as major, papers where instructions to authors were not adhered to, and the number of reviews not submitted on time.

RESULTS

The median duration of the review process was found to be 74 days, and papers were on average returned to authors 1.73 times for revision. In 35.8% of papers, instructions to authors were not adhered to, whilst 29.8% of papers contained major grammatical errors. In 70.1% of papers reviewers did not submit their reviews on time, whilst the median time spent on revision by authors per review round was found to be 22 days.

CONCLUSION

This study highlights the importance of communication before and during review. Reviewers should be thoroughly briefed on their role and what is expected of them, whilst the review process as well as the author's role in preventing delays should be explained to contributors upon submission.