The scientific standard of a paper is guaranteed by peer review. An author’s manuscript is assessed by people having expertise in the same area of research. These experts are called peers. For any scholarly publication, a manuscript has to go through the peer review process of that particular journal.
The Purpose of Peer Review
- Peer review is intended to evaluate the quality, authenticity, and novelty of a research paper.
- Peer review proposes to preserve research integrity by eliminating low-quality articles. The right kind of articles go to the right kind of journals through the peer review process.
- Peer review makes a major contribution to articles by enhancing their quality. Therefore, publishers should focus on effective peer review.
- Good authors look for journals with efficient and fast peer review processes.
- Transparency in the peer review process leads to honest comments and responses by reviewers that can improve the quality of a paper.
- Peer reviewers may highlight areas in a paper that call for more research or clarification. This way, the lacunas in a paper are filled.
- In case a manuscript has unclear sections, then reviewers suggest changes that can improve the readability and flow of the paper.
- By sending a paper to a journal having a constructive peer-review process, an author gets to know where to work on his/her manuscript, irrespective of whether it gets selected or rejected by the journal.
- The process of peer review depends on the journal. Four types of peer review processes are there, namely:
Single-blind: Here, although the reviewers are aware of the authors’ names, the authors are unaware of their names.
Double-blind: In this peer review process, the authors and reviewers are strangers to each other.
Open: In this process, both the reviewers and the authors are familiar with one another’s names. If the article gets accepted for publication, the reviewers’ report with their names and the response to the reviewer by the authors get published as well.
Transparent: The reviewers are aware of who wrote the paper, even though the authors are unaware of the reviewers’ names. During publication, the response to the reviewer and unattributed reviewer reports are published together with the manuscript.
Conclusion
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