The importance of peer review

Abstract

Foreign Language Annals, like many academic journals, is peer-reviewed, which means that every article published goes through a rigorous peer review process. The peer review is fully anonymous, meaning that reviewers do not know the identity of the author(s) and that the authors do not know the identity of the reviewers. When an author submits an article, our Managing Editor, Dr. Luke Plonsky, ensures that it is anonymized and that it generally follows the Author Guidelines. Then, the manuscript is assigned to one of the two editors for a desk review. Our Graduate Publications Intern, Lidia Gault, checks the manuscript to ensure it is appropriately blinded and includes all required components. In her initial check of the manuscript, she highlights key considerations for the Editors as we make our decision about sending it out for review. Then, the manuscript is reviewed by one of the two editors. We read the cover letter and the manuscript to decide whether it is ready for external review.

In 2024, approximately 85% of articles were rejected at this stage and 15% continued to the next stage for peer review. Once we decide that the manuscript is ready for external review, we begin the often-arduous task of inviting peer reviewers. We seek a minimum of three peer reviews on each manuscript. Our colleagues across the field who serve as reviewers provide feedback and indicate whether they think the manuscript should receive the determination of Accept, Major Revision, Minor Revision, or Reject. The editor then reads the reviews and decides on the next step. For manuscripts that have gone out for peer review, decisions of Major Revision or Minor Revision are the most common. In these cases, the reviewers' suggestions are sent back to be considered and incorporated by the author. Manuscripts rarely receive a decision of Accept on their first review. Similarly, the desk review process typically catches many manuscripts that would receive an initial decision of Reject. Manuscripts with a decision of Major Revision typically go back to reviewers, and we always invite the same reviewers that previously read the manuscript. Those with a decision of Minor Revision may be reviewed on the next round solely by the editors. Some manuscripts go through multiple rounds of peer review.

Through this description, our intention is to stress that peer review is critical to the success of our journal. While the peer review process has existed since the 17th century, the anonymous review process did not become standard practice until the 1950s (Horta & Jung, 2024). Today, anonymous review is considered the “golden standard of scientific publication” (Kovanis et al., 2017, p. 652) and a critical part of the quality control process. Peer review ensures that a manuscript's findings and implications are sound and advance the field (Severin et al., 2021). For Foreign Language Annals, we seek peer reviewers with expertise relevant to the manuscript, either in regard to content or methodology. In this way, too, the peer review process creates collaboration and interaction amongst researchers to improve the quality of the research (Mason & Chong, 2023).

Yet, finding peer reviewers is difficult. While the number of manuscripts submitted to journals like Foreign Language Annals grows substantially each year, it becomes more and more difficult to find available reviewers. Horta and Jung (2024, p. 1) refer to this as “the crisis of peer review”. They contend that the crisis is caused by the imbalanced ratio of manuscript submissions to willing reviewers, as well as skewed incentives that reward publishing but do not reward reviewing. The influx of submissions, some which may suffer from issues of quality and readability, “overloads the capacity of editors and peer reviewers to handle the submitted articles properly” (Horta & Jung, 2024, p. 5) resulting in a length of time required by peer review that sometimes “causes dissatisfaction among authors” (Horta & Jung, 2024, p. 4).

Foreign Language Annals has an editorial board of 15 individuals with diverse areas of research. These individuals are integral to the success of the journal and we rely on them for peer review. However, even if each of these 15 individuals engages in five peer reviews annually, we still require many more reviews. In 2024, we received 325 submissions to FLA. A large percentage of our pee review invitations were declined. On a recent manuscript, we sent out nine peer review invitations before we were able to secure three reviews. To help address this crisis in peer review, we began a Super Reviewers program with the support of ACTFL in 2024. When peer reviews come in, we typically rate the review on the quality and timeliness. Based on that database of scores, we invited individuals who had done a minimum number of reviews and who also had high reviewer scores to join the program. Those who accepted the invitation were asked to review a specified number of submissions throughout the year. In appreciation of their support, ACTFL has generously provided these Super Reviewers with a free 1-year membership to the organization. Super Reviewers could also choose to gift their membership to a student or colleague. This year, we began the second iteration of the Super Reviewers program. To open the opportunity to more colleagues, we invited participation via ACTFL Central and social media. Forty-three applied and were accepted in November 2024 and many have already completed one or two reviews.

While the incentives to engage in peer review are certainly not financial, they do exist. For new scholars, peer review presents a unique learning opportunity. After submitting a review, the editor then shares all the reviews with the reviewers. As early career faculty members, we spent many hours analyzing the reviews of the other anonymous reviewers to determine how ours compared and how we might improve. On a recent manuscript, we invited a peer reviewer who wrote back with a request. He explained that he did not have time to do the review himself, but that he had a doctoral student who was interested and had the necessary expertise. This colleague offered to mentor the student through the review process of the manuscript, reading the review and offering feedback before it was submitted. The benefits went two ways – we received an excellent high-quality and timely review and the doctoral student was apprenticed into the process of scholarly review. For newer and more established scholars alike, peer review is an opportunity to read the newest research and shape that research, asking authors to dialogue with additional literature they may have missed or suggesting different perspectives on data analysis that could improve the clarity of the results. While reviews are not typically counted on a faculty member's annual review, they shape one's scholarship in other less observable ways.

So, as you engage with the articles in this issue, keep in mind that they were each shaped by the suggestions of anonymous peer reviewers. Should you like to get involved with peer review but feel unsure about how to conduct a scholarly review, please check out the presentation available at this link by our managing editor, Dr. Luke Plonsky. And, to our authors, thank you for your contributions to our journal and please consider our future requests for peer review!