The How and Why of Peer Review

Raise your hand if you've ever ignored, deleted or lost track of an invitation from an editor to review a manuscript. Peer review is both a process and a role that doesn't always work well for anyone involved. Editors hunt endlessly for scholars to invite to do peer review. Authors hope for thoughtful and understanding peer reviewers whenever they upload a manuscript for consideration by a journal. Peer reviewers? Well, they are often long-serving and somewhat beleaguered by invitations as word of their service spreads across journals. But those who could serve as reviewers often seem to be in hiding, perplexing editors and indirectly frustrating authors.

Despite complex logistics, peer review is a favourite topic of mine. In critical ways, the quality of our science—any science—rests on high-quality peer review. Peer reviewers deserve far more recognition than they receive. The Associate Editors here at the International Journal of Older People Nursing (IJOPN) and I enjoy honouring our most outstanding peer reviewers with our annual awards. There, peer reviewers rank right alongside authors and editorial board members, enjoying our accolades. Our annual editorial announcing those awards is truly a special one to celebrate each year. Watch for the editorial about our 2023 awards later this year!

Peer reviewers are different from authors, editorial board members and editors in one important way. Peer reviewers are the only group who are anonymous. They remain anonymous until we single them out for recognition and, even then, what they reviewed is known only to them and to us as editors. Although some journals do now include the names of reviewers who wish to be known when publishing the manuscript they have reviewed. Their role in disseminating high-quality science must remain invisible to both authors and readers in a journal like this one that employs double-blind review. So called double- and single-blind—or anonymised—reviews offer distinct advantages over open peer reviews. Both reviewer and author are not known to each other in the doubly anonymised version and the reviewer is not known to the author, though the author is typically known to the reviewer, in the single version. Anonymising the review process helps limit implicit bias, supporting better inclusion in publishing and providing editors, who cannot be blinded, with valuable insights and critical evaluation of any manuscript they deem ready for peer review.

Beyond our editorials announcing our annual awards, peer review has been my focus in several other editorials. I've written about the relationship of peer reviewers to authors and editors (Kagan 2019), giving credit for peer review (Kagan 2022), and offered specific tips to reviewers as well as authors (Kagan 2024a, 2024b). In all these editorials, I aim to improve the peer review process here at IJOPN by strengthening peer reviewers' skills and more broadly educating our readers about peer review. Results of my efforts have been mixed. We've gained new members for our peer review panel, which I like to think is due in part to those editorials combined with the attraction created by the quality of the manuscripts we publish. Welcoming new reviewers and acknowledging the incredible commitment of all our reviewers are reasons for applause.

Our peer review process continues to face significant challenges despite the gains of adding new reviewers and the gratitude we feel towards our steadfast group of regular reviewers. Foremost among those challenges is difficulty recruiting qualified peer reviewers, especially for the most novel manuscripts we receive. These challenges then result in delays returning reviews to authors. The Associate Editors and I frequently support and even console each other as we contend with peer reviewer recruitment. As I pondered this problem, I realised that colleagues are increasingly likely to be put off by the thought of how much work they imagine reviewing a manuscript takes. They are right to think that doing peer review well takes work. The adage that everything worth doing takes work is true here. But there are ways to make peer review much more efficient and effective. While there's no definitive way to do better, faster reviews, I've got some tips to share that colleagues tell me are helpful to them. So, here's my quick peer review guide. I hope you find it useful while doing reviews for IJOPN and when reviewing for other journals, too.

That's my quick guide to peer review. I hope it helps you feel more confident and organised in conducting your next peer review. I hope it allows you to say yes to more invitations to review from this and other journals that publish manuscripts in your areas of interest. Those reviews are among your most valuable contributions to science.

Peer review is truly essential to science. Peer review helps ensure the quality and integrity of science as a jury of our scientific peers vets both proposed research and research reports against established standards. All scientists need to be expected to and given credit for doing peer review. Each of us can start by claiming credit for peer reviews when journals offer it. Everyone who reviews for IJOPN can credit each review to their Publons account. Departments, schools and universities can do even more. They can create policies setting expectations for conducting peer reviews along with teaching students and colleagues how to do effective peer review.

Few doctoral programs or faculties in nursing teach peer review, let alone address the topics of editorial roles and skills. We who work in scholarly communities somehow imagine that reviewing and editing are optional skills that a select few acquire later in the career trajectory. Often, we seem to think these skills can be acquired only by apprenticeship to established reviewers and editors. That model is not maintainable. Our science requires high-quality peer review and editing. We cannot leave peer review or editing to chance given that today's workload, performance expectations and demands for scientific productivity exist at what feel like record levels. Moreover, learning to be a competent peer reviewer is a great way to gain insight into what being an editor is like. Peer review and its sister role of editing require rigorous preparation in parallel with research education and training. Towards that end, I'm offering to do an online peer review workshop for up to 10 groups such as research teams, PhD programs or schools in nursing who would like one. Please email me with your requests for such a workshop.

Meanwhile, I hope we all take few moments to acknowledge the irreplaceable value of peer review, thank those who serve as reviewers and revel in the satisfaction that comes in completing an effective and helpful peer review. What's stopping you from accepting the next invitation to review a manuscript in your area of expertise? As always, please turn to our IJOPN social media streams to share your experiences and ideas about peer review. Tag @IntJnlOPN in your posts on X (formerly Twitter) and on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/IJOPN/ and use our signature hashtag #GeroNurses along with the hashtag #PeerReview when you do!

The author declares no conflicts of interest.