Academy in Being An Effective Peer Reviewer

Peer review is an essential component in academic publishing. It not only helps determine what should be published but also helps improve what is published so the research is more useful for the field. However, many researchers do not receive training on how to be an effective peer reviewer. Therefore, younger post-docs and faculty may hesitate to accept a reviewer invitation because they do not have the confidence to do it well. For those that do accept, a poor reviewer report can reflect poorly on their reputation in the field.

Nature Research Academies has developed this peer reviewer academy aims to give researchers the skills and confidence to be effective reviewers. To increase interaction and stimulate discussion, this academy is limited to 30 participants.

• 1-day workshops
• Available to institutions globally, to host on-site
• For up to 30 postdocs and faculty

Academy content

• Responsibilities and ethics
  • Accepting reviewer invitations and timeliness
  • Confidentiality and conflicts of interest
  • Communicating with journal editors
• Assessing the relevance of the manuscript
  • Determining the usefulness of the research question and study objectives
  • Evaluating originality and novelty
  • Assessing the appropriateness of the study design
  • Initial evaluation and writing the summary for the reviewer report
• Abstracts, Introduction and Methods
  • Evaluating titles, keywords and abstracts
  • Assessing the clarity of the Introduction
  • Determining the breadth of the literature review
  • Evaluating the appropriateness and transparency of the methodology
• Results and Discussions
  • Evaluating the clarity of figures
  • Assessing the significance of findings
  • Reviewing the thoroughness of the Discussion
  • Determining the validity of the conclusion

Read more about Nature Research Academies