Reviews, reviewers and reviewing

Excerpt

The November Editorial of Clinical Orthopaedics and Related Research [1] authored by our distinguished colleague Seth S. Leopold from Seattle enlightened our vision about the peer review process and challenged our minds. Reviewers are key characters in the scientific production process; therefore we positioned ourselves as evaluators, as we are all reviewers at some point. Since we found this experiment valuable, we proposed to share it with you and ask rhetorically: Could you still recall the first time you've been invited by an editor to review a scientific paper? It is usually pretty exciting, but why should you spend time with it? Most of us are prone to accept an invitation to review, as it acknowledges our expertise in a specific domain. The call to serve as a referee for a manuscript is an honour, for sure, but also a responsibility; however, at the bottom line a reviewer improves gradually, raising his or her credentials and curricular scores, refining writing skills and keeping updated with new and exciting findings in science. …