Publishing the review process: an initiative for readers, authors and (future) reviewers

Excerpt

Each original manuscript proposed to the journal is submitted to the peer-review process. Although this reviewing process may differ in the exact way it is performed according to the different categories of manuscripts, this time and energy-consuming process is a common rule. The general principle is to ask several experts to critically appraise the merits and limitations of the study, consider the quality and clarity in the presentation of the data, examine whether the overall discussion appropriately reviews the major findings and the limitations of the study, and determine whether the conclusion is supported by the data. Overall, each reviewer tells the editor and the author his/her view on whether the manuscript can be improved and how. A general but straightforward statement is confidentially given to the editor about the manuscript’s main problems and the likelihood of seeing these problems correctly addressed in a revised version. This represents an invaluable support to help the associate editor taking his/her decision, and when appropriate, it constitutes the framework which might help the authors to revise and hopefully improve the manuscript. Detailed reviews are important because they point out precisely where and how the improvement can be made. This may greatly help the authors, even if the manuscript is not accepted, since most of the time manuscripts are eventually published... somewhere. The whole process is often prolonged and complicated, consisting of detailed comments and criticisms from the reviewers, careful answers, and appropriate manuscript changes by the authors. Once the article has been accepted after one or several revisions and is eventually published, however, this process becomes suddenly invisible to the readers. It is, however, an essential step in the production of scientific literature. We, as associate editors, sometimes deeply involved in this process, and at least following these intellectual debates with great interest, find it regrettable to let all this work ignored. This is not only because the review process can be long, sometimes fastidious, and represents many hours spent by reviewers and authors. It is also because it can constitute a very educational demonstration of how an external view—the reviewer’s eye—can pick up the important messages as well as the weaknesses of a study, whereas the authors had difficulty differentiating one from the other. …