Peer review is a process by which researchers gain a type of formal validation of their results. When a researcher wants to communicate a new discovery, they write a description of the research and the results in a standard format: a research article.
The article is sent to an academic journal, then through a brief review by a journal editor. If the journal editor is interested in publishing the article, they send the article to several people in the research community - called peer reviewers. These individuals critically read the article and provide comments for the authors and editor. If the comments are favorable overall, the author of the article addresses the reviewers’ suggestions, often requiring revisions to the manuscript and sometimes even additional experiments or analyses.
Finally, after another round of peer review, final recommendations are sent to the journal editor, who takes everything into consideration and makes a final decision on whether to publish the manuscript.
Advantages of a peer review
The peer review process represents a discourse between the researchers and their peers, where researchers gain valuable feedback from researchers in the same (or related) fields, allowing them to improve their work and strengthen their conclusions.
Going through the peer review process can often add breadth and depth to the conclusions of a research article.
Peer review provides the validation of having earned the implicit approval of the researchers’ peers; an article published in a peer-reviewed journal has been viewed by other researchers in the field and the conclusions are generally accepted.
Disadvantages of a peer review
The peer review process can take quite a long time - on average, the total duration of peer review is 4 months. This can hold up the communication of important information and result in other researchers wasting time replicating results in a similar study.
When a manuscript is rejected at the researchers’ target journal after a lengthy round of peer review, the reset button is effectively hit on the article’s journey through scientific publication. This causes frustration and can prevent researchers from advancing in their careers.
The peer review system can take quite a toll on researchers, who are expected to volunteer their time to help review colleagues’ manuscripts. This makes it difficult for journals to find reviewers, which can add even more time to the peer review process.
Peer review is an inherently human process. Some unique ethical issues arise around how reviewers are chosen and whether their reviews change manuscripts in biased ways.
In certain situations, rapid communication is urgent, especially in an era of a major public health crisis. The length of time needed for peer review can prevent the effective communication of preliminary results that would otherwise shape future work.
What does the peer review process look like?
More and more journals are offering a glimpse into their peer review process. Open peer review looks different at different journals, but the more transparency exists about who reviewed a manuscript and what was changed, the more information the reader has to determine whether they trust an article’s conclusions.
Did peer review really happen, and was the degree of review appropriate?
Some journals, often called “predatory journals,” accept articles for publication - along with fees for publication - without engaging in any peer review, or using peer review as a formality that isn’t really considered in the decision to publish. Consider where the article is published - if the journal is considered predatory, you may wish to look elsewhere for more reliable information.
Not all peer review is journal-led peer review
Peer review is changing and expanding beyond the pages of a journal. New independent peer review sources exist to crowdsource peer reviews on preprint articles, and preprint servers themselves host different types of commenting functions that can act as informal peer review as well.