Academy in Being An Effective Peer Reviewer
This workshop is available to be delivered face-to-face or virtually.
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
- For up to 30 postdocs and faculty
Academy content
- Responsibilities and ethics
- Discusses the importance of peer review for the author, the journal, and for the field
- Discusses how editors choose reviewers and what are their expectations
- Reviews when a researcher should accept an invitation to be a reviewer and if so, the responsibilities they will be expected to adhere to as a referee
- Discusses ethical issues surrounding peer review such as confidentiality, objectivity, and bias
- Assessing manuscript relevance
- Reviews strategies to conduct peer review thoroughly and efficiently
- Determines what the journal is expecting in terms of breadth and impact, which helps to tailor the review to be appropriate
- Discusses how to assess the relevance of the manuscript from a big picture perspective – what is the motivation behind the study and is that important for the field now?
- Evaluating the manuscript
- Evaluates each section of the manuscript, beginning with common mistakes made related to the title and abstract and how to advise the appropriate changes for the author
- Highlights strategies to evaluate the clearly and breadth of the Introduction as well as the technical rigor and transparency in the Methods
- Discusses how to assess the clarity and appropriateness of the Figures and the accuracy of their description
- Reviews how to ensure the Discussion thoroughly discusses the relevance of the results for the field as well as the validity of the conclusion
- Writing clear reviewer reports
- Introduces the different types of reports that reviewers may encounter while working with different journals, as well as the editorial expectations
- Reviews how to write an effective summary of the study and how this will be important for both the editor and the author
- Discusses the confidential comments to the editor and the information that editors are expecting the reviewer to share about the study
- Highlights strategies on how to communicate any major and/or minor concerns with the study to the authors
