It’s no exaggeration to write that volunteer peer reviewers are the foundation of scholarly communication.  The contributions they make are enormous but the nature of the conventional independent blind peer review process means that these contributions are rarely fully understood.  As a publisher I see this on a daily basis.  After a peer review report is compiled and an editorial decision made by an editor in chief or associate editor from individual peer reviewers’ reports, and after the reports are sent to authors, I read most of them.  I don’t think in the past seven years I’ve seen a peer review report that didn’t make a constructive improvement to the paper under review, even if the paper was rejected by the editor in chief or associate editor.  

Not only do peer reviewers make an enormous contribution to authors’ work, but they also devote a significant amount of their own time to writing their report.  Our research shows that about 80% of reviewers spend more than an hour writing their report, and that almost half of the reviewers we surveyed perform eight or more reviews per year, with about 20% doing more than 16 per year.  

I expect you’ll now understand why I think that authors should take some basic steps to ensure that they make peer reviewers’ work easier.  In taking these steps authors can ensure that they avoid unnecessary distractions or impediments to reviewers, enabling them to work efficiently and focus on the essentials, and they’re also less likely to receive negative peer review reports resulting in rejection rather than acceptance for publication.

Suggestion 1. Ensure that your reasoning and methodologies are sound before submission. 

How best to do this?  I suggest having a colleague do an informal peer review of your manuscript.  Ask him or her to review the paper in the same way as they would a paper they were reviewing for a journal.  Address the problems he/she identifies before formally submitting your manuscript to a journal.

Suggestion 2. Ensure compliance with ethical requirements and that the manuscript is free of plagiarised material. 

Any reputable journal will have a clear statement of ethical requirements, relating to points like accurate authorship and contributorship information, copyright, disclosures of potential conflicts of interest, research involving human or animal subjects and requiring institutional review board approval, and information that could be used to identify patients.  Understand these requirements before you submit your manuscript and address any deficiencies.  Plagiarism is a problem that is growing in severity.  Although all authors should be wary, our experience shows that if your paper contains contributions from junior colleagues you should be particularly careful.  Generally journals scan incoming manuscripts for evidence of plagiarism but no scanner is perfect and if a paper is published that is shown to contain plagiarised material the implications for the authors can be very serious.  If you’re not confident about the origins of any content in a manuscript get it scanned and make sure all authors understand what plagiarism is before the paper is submitted.  Most journals will be willing to do a pre-submission scan too: just ask.  Tempted to publish in a journal that doesn’t have these ethical requirements?  Don’t be.  

Suggestion 3. If you’re not a native English speaker before submission have your paper edited by someone who is. 

Weak English will make it difficult for peer reviewers to assess the content of your paper and will lead to adverse feedback.  Remember that spell-checking your manuscript will not address all problems arising from weak English.  

Suggestion 4.  Ensure that your manuscript is correctly formatted according to journal requirements. 

Most journals have specific presentation requirements.  These are intended to ensure that peer reviewers, as well as editors in chief, associate editors, and the journal’s administrative staff can work efficiently with manuscripts.  Like having your manuscript edited by a native English speaker, compliant formatting removes unnecessary ‘road-blocks’ that prevent peer reviewers from doing their jobs properly.

Suggestion 5. Ensure that files are open-able and non-corrupted. 

This will normally be checked by the journal’s administrative staff too but there’s no harm in verifying it before submission.  

- Tom Hill, CEO, Libertas Academica

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