Within the scientific community, peer review is an essential part of research writing and the dissemination of new ideas or validation/disconfirmation of existing concepts. It is a process wherein scientific experts assess a research manuscript and provide valuable feedback and recommendation on whether the research manuscript is suitable for publication.
According to the International Journal of Surgery: Oncology, there are seven types of peer review. They are as follows:
- Single-blinded peer review: This is the most common form of peer review. Under this type, the identity of an author is made known to a peer reviewer, but the author is not made aware of the identity of the peer reviewer.
- Double-blinded peer review: Both the peer reviewer and the author do not know each other’s identities.
- Open peer review: Both the peer reviewer and the author know each other’s identities.
- Postpublication peer review: This is a newer type of peer review where peer review is conducted after a research manuscript has been published.
- Preprint publication: This type of peer review enables research manuscripts to be published more quickly as it bypasses the bottleneck of peer reviewing. However, it can produce errors and poor research quality during the period between publication and peer review.
- Collaborative peer review: Under this type, peer reviewers can view each other’s feedback, share their comments with each other, and produce a final peer review report.
- Interactive peer review: Under this type, an editor first evaluates a research manuscript for ethical issues and substandard quality. Then, peer reviewers work directly with the author(s) of the manuscript by providing real-time feedback.
Peer review provides various benefits to different stakeholders such as the society, authors, and peer reviewers. The following are some of them:
Society
- Scientific research is utilized in various industries, governmental policies, and regional schemes. Peer review ensures that these areas are provided with high-quality research that has undergone quality control.
- It prevents falsified research from being accepted in an area of study.
- It prevents substandard scientific research from being published.
- It helps ensure that the research papers that are published in scientific journals have significant contributions to science and have accurate conclusions.
Authors
- It helps an author revise and improve his/her paper before publication through valuable feedback from experts.
- It encourages authors to meet the set standards in their field of expertise.
- It checks for vague terms, confusing sentences and paragraphs, and major errors.
- It allows an author to see the perspectives of different experts on their research topic.
- It enables an author to validate his/her research findings.
Peer reviewers
- It lets peer reviewers know the most recent research in their field of expertise.
- It can significantly boost a peer reviewer’s career and research and funding opportunities.
- It enables a peer reviewer to establish new connections and become a part of a research network that can be beneficial to his/her career.
- It can let a peer reviewer save on publication fees as some scientific journals waive or lessen publication fees if an author is willing to review manuscripts by other researchers.
- It can boost a peer reviewer’s credentials as being peer reviewer entails knowledge of a field and excellent evaluation skills.
Lexcode, a company that provides interpretation, translation, and editing services in the Philippines, aims to help researchers ensure that their manuscripts are of international quality. To this end, in 2018, it launched Journal Lab by Lexcode (JLL), a one-stop shop for academic editing and journal publication. JLL aims to increase the success rate of manuscript publication by providing researchers with services that will help them in preparing for journal submission such as general editing, scholar editing, formatting, journal selection, peer review, and journal submission.
