Tips and tricks for how to become a good reviewer.

Peer review is an essential process to ensure that scientific articles meet high standards of methodology, ethics and quality. The peer-review process is a part of the academic mission for physicians in the university setting. The work of reviewers is of great value for authors, as it gives constructive criticism and improves manuscript quality before publication. Often, however, reviews are of suboptimal quality. Usually, reviewers do not receive formal training either on how to perform a review or on the peer-review process. In addition, it is generally believed that experienced authors are great reviewers, but this may not always be true. The overarching goal of a review is to make the manuscript better; to help the authors. The purpose of this article is to offer relevant suggestions and provide a checklist on how to perform a useful review.

A survey to assess animal methods bias in scientific publishing.

Publication of scientific findings is fundamental for research, pushing innovation and generating interventions that benefit society, but it is not without biases. Publication bias is generally recognized as a journal's preference for publishing studies based on the direction and magnitude of results. However, early evidence of a newly recognized type of publication bias has emerged in which journal policy, peer reviewers, or editors request that animal data be provided to validate studies produced using nonanimal-based approaches. We describe herein "animal methods bias" in publishing: a preference for animal-based methods where they may not be necessary or where nonanimal-based methods may be suitable, which affects the likelihood of a manuscript being accepted for publication. To gather evidence of animal methods bias, we set out to collect the experiences and perceptions of scientists and reviewers related to animal- and nonanimal-based experiments during peer review. We created a cross-sectional survey with 33 questions that was completed by 90 respondents working in various biological fields. Twenty-one survey respondents indicated that they have carried out animal-based experiments for the sole purpose of anticipating reviewer requests. Thirty-one survey respondents indicated that they have been asked by peer reviewers to add animal experimental data to their nonanimal study; 14 of these felt the request was sometimes justified, and 11 did not think it was justified. The data presented provide preliminary evidence of animal methods bias and indicate that status quo and conservatism biases may explain such attitudes by peer reviewers and editors.

Nobel and novice: Author prominence affects peer review.

Peer review is a well-established cornerstone of the scientific process, yet it is not immune to biases like status bias, which we explore in this paper. Merton described this bias as prominent researchers getting disproportionately great credit for their contribution, while relatively unknown researchers get disproportionately little credit [R. K. Merton, Science 159, 56-63 (1968)]. We measured the extent of this bias in the peer-review process through a preregistered field experiment. We invited more than 3,300 researchers to review a finance research paper jointly written by a prominent author (a Nobel laureate) and by a relatively unknown author (an early career research associate), varying whether reviewers saw the prominent author's name, an anonymized version of the paper, or the less-well-known author's name. We found strong evidence for the status bias: More of the invited researchers accepted to review the paper when the prominent name was shown, and while only 23% recommended "reject" when the prominent researcher was the only author shown, 48% did so when the paper was anonymized, and 65% did when the little-known author was the only author shown. Our findings complement and extend earlier results on double-anonymized vs. single-anonymized review [R. Blank, Am. Econ. Rev. 81, 1041-1067 (1991); M. A. Ucci, F. D'Antonio, V. Berghella, Am. J. Obstet. Gynecol. MFM 4, 100645 (2022)].

Tracking changes between preprint posting and journal publication during a pandemic.

Amid the Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, preprints in the biomedical sciences are being posted and accessed at unprecedented rates, drawing widespread attention from the general public, press, and policymakers for the first time. This phenomenon has sharpened long-standing questions about the reliability of information shared prior to journal peer review. Does the information shared in preprints typically withstand the scrutiny of peer review, or are conclusions likely to change in the version of record? We assessed preprints from bioRxiv and medRxiv that had been posted and subsequently published in a journal through April 30, 2020, representing the initial phase of the pandemic response. We utilised a combination of automatic and manual annotations to quantify how an article changed between the preprinted and published version. We found that the total number of figure panels and tables changed little between preprint and published articles. Moreover, the conclusions of 7.2% of non-COVID-19-related and 17.2% of COVID-19-related abstracts undergo a discrete change by the time of publication, but the majority of these changes do not qualitatively change the conclusions of the paper.

Peer-reviewing in Surgical Journals: Revolutionize or Perish?

The gold standard of safe-guarding the quality of published science is peer review. However, this long-standing system has not evolved in today's digital world, where there has been an explosion in the number of publications and surgical journals. A journal's quality depends not only on the quality of papers submitted but is reflected upon the quality of its peer review process. Over the past decade journals are experiencing a rapidly escalating "peer review crisis" with editors struggling in recruiting reliable reviewers who will provide their skilled work for free with ever-diminishing incentives within today's restricted time-constraints. The problem is complex and difficult to solve, but more urgent than ever. Time is valuable and academicians, researchers and clinicians are overburdened and already extremely busy publishing their own research along with their ever growing clinical and administrative duties. Fewer and fewer individuals volunteer to provide their skilled work for free which is expected. The current incentives to review do not have a big impact on one's career and therefore are not realistic effective countermeasures. As the limits of the system are constantly stretched, there will inevitably come a "point of no return" and Surgical Journals will be the ones to first take the hit as there is an overwhelming evidence of burnout in the surgical specialties and the Surgical community is almost 50% smaller than its Medical counterpart. This review identifies the potential causes of the peer-review crisis, outlines the incentives and drawbacks of being a reviewer, summarizes the currently established common practices of rewarding reviewers and the existing and potential solutions to the problem. The magnitude of the problem and unsustainability that will make it perish are discussed along with its current flaws. Finally, recommendations are made to address many of the weaknesses of the system with the hope to revive it.