Showing posts with label Peer Review. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Peer Review. Show all posts
February 1, 2017
Peer review at Am Nat
At the American Naturalist, our goal is to help papers develop. We try to give feedback even to papers that aren't a great fit for Am Nat. But we especially try to work with papers that can fit our niche to help them become the best they can be. We appreciate so much the time our reviewers take to be careful and thorough and helpful. Sometimes this aspect gets lost in discussions of peer review, so we're glad when we get positive feedback like the letter below when the author got news of the manuscript's acceptance (posted with permission).
Dear Dr. Winn,
Many thanks - this really is exciting news! ...
If you think it would be appropriate, I'd very much appreciate if you could send on the following note to Dr. Collar and to the two reviewers who commented on this manuscript. I'm always a bit hesitant to be too complimentary towards editors and reviewers during the review process for fear that it will appear that I'm trying to butter them up, but now I really want to express how grateful I am to them, and to the editorial structure at AmNat.
While most of our colleagues responded positively to the topic when we passed an early draft of the manuscript around for "friendly review", we found it difficult to get much advice on what we needed to do in order to improve it. The feedback that we got from the review process was immensely helpful in providing this. In particular, I cannot express how grateful I am for:
(1) the advice on how to address phylogenetic uncertainty that we received from Dr. Collar and from reviewer 2 (both in the reviews and in subsequent emails)
(2) the detailed description of missing links in our citations provided by reviewer 1, which importantly also included examples of papers that we could read in order to fill those gaps
and
(3) the very careful and specific critiques and suggestions for our modeling methods from reviewer 2, which made it clear that they had invested a lot of effort in going through them
But, I think the most important part of the review process for us was how incredibly encouraging the editors and reviewers were at all stages. Both of us are quite junior in our career trajectories, and while the opportunity for double-blind reviews gave us a bit more courage to "aim high" with this paper, I don't know that we would have considered ourselves capable of completing the suggested revisions without the very kind words that you, Dr. Collar, and the reviewers included at the beginning of each of your comments.
I think that the most genuine complement that I can give is that this manuscript simply wouldn't have been completed in its current state without all of this help and encouragement.
Many thanks again,
Adam Clark
May 1, 2015
Links about signing reviews
As our experiment in trying double blind lite continues, I found this post on Small Pond Science about signing or not signing reviews, with the extended comments, very interesting: http://smallpondscience.com/2014/03/26/why-i-prefer-anonymous-peer-reviews/
But I do have to say, as someone who reads all of the reviews that leave the office, anonymous reviewers have been no less diligent and professional than the reviewers who signed. And the very few that have serious problems are caught in the editorial process and addressed.
Three links mentioned in the comments are ones I've read and liked in the past, so I thought I'd repeat them here:
But I do have to say, as someone who reads all of the reviews that leave the office, anonymous reviewers have been no less diligent and professional than the reviewers who signed. And the very few that have serious problems are caught in the editorial process and addressed.
Three links mentioned in the comments are ones I've read and liked in the past, so I thought I'd repeat them here:
- Ten tips on how to write a good peer review in any field from the Guardian: http://www.theguardian.com/higher-education-network/blog/2013/sep/27/peer-review-10-tips-research-paper
- And though I have referred to this before, there is this extensive look at peer review and how to write a review from the British Ecological Society: http://www.britishecologicalsociety.org/wp-content/uploads/Publ_Peer-Review-Booklet.pdf
- Results of a survey that Molecular Ecology did about signing reviews: http://www.molecularecologist.com/2014/04/do-we-sign-our-peer-reviews-mostly-n
December 6, 2013
Peer Review Step by Step at Am Nat
So, in reading along in the Twitter stream, I noticed this conversation by @hylopsar (Hi, Rafael!) about how opaque the steps in the peer review process are for authors who haven't been on the editorial side and how nice it would be to see what the expectations are for "normal":
This is just my view from the Am Nat journal office of course!
1) The manuscript arrives in the web system. One of us in the journal office gives it what the system calls a technical check--Is the PDF readable? Did the math symbols turn into tiny empty boxes? Is it double spaced? We try to minimize annoyance, but reviewers hate it if isn't formatted right, so we're just trying to save you grief later.
2) The manuscript then waits for one of the three deciding editors to claim it. This depends on people's schedules, but it generally moves along every day. The deciding editor finds the time to look the manuscript over and determine whether it can fit our niche. If it seems like it can or they aren't sure, it goes to the next stage...
3) The manuscript gets assigned to an associate editor. We get manuscripts across a broad spectrum of subjects. Though we have quite a few associate editors, we sometimes struggle to get a manuscript assigned. AEs have busy schedules and not all have the expertise needed for that manuscript. We also avoid loading up an AE all at once.
4) If the manuscript seems like it might fit our niche, the AE then develops a list of six suggested reviewers to send to the journal office. If the manuscript is a bit of a stretch for the AE, then developing that list can take a bit of time and exploration.
5) The journal office takes that list and checks for availability and some basic conflicts of interest. We try to give reviewers at least two months off between assignments. Then two reviewers are invited to review. If we don't get a response to the invitation in a few days, we follow up, wait a day, and then move down the list until we find two reviewers who agree to review. As can be imagined, this process can take some time for some manuscripts especially at some busy times of year. If we run out of names, we ask the AE for more suggestions and start the process over.
6) The standard due date for a review is 21 days after the reviewer agrees to review.
7) When the reviews are completed, the journal office checks them over to make sure the fields are filled out, there aren't any obvious missing bits, and any attachments uploaded correctly. When both reviews are in, the manuscript is returned to the associate editor for a recommendation. The deadline for the recommendation is two weeks since we expect that an AE may have to set aside a considerable block of time to sort out what needs to happen next.
8) The AE writes the recommendation and the manuscript moves back to the deciding editor, who reads over the whole package--manuscript, reviews, and recommendation--before writing the decision letter.
9) Finally, the decision letter is assembled and sent by the journal office.
We try to keep a manuscript moving along, but there are many steps when many busy people might take a little longer. We in the office work regular office hours (and have vacations and weekends and sick days), so if you submit your paper late on Friday, you won't hear from us until Monday.
The problem is always how to balance thorough with timely. When thorough review works well, it works very well indeed. I really appreciated how much it could mean for an author when I read Meghan Duffy's blog post about how review at Am Nat improved her paper:
http://dynamicecology.wordpress.com/2012/10/16/the-paper-that-ecology-rejected-that-later-won-the-mercer-award/
So when it takes a little longer, we ARE trying to get you the most useful feedback we can in as timely a period as we can, while trying to gauge whether the manuscript fits our niche.
@Ben_Sheldon_EGI @BobOHara @naubinhorth @GOrizaola @RobFreckleton @MethodsEcolEvol eg don't think Ive seen breakdown of time taken each step
@Ben_Sheldon_EGI @BobOHara @naubinhorth @GOrizaola @RobFreckleton @MethodsEcolEvol but transparency itself already helps lot,frm author side
This is just my view from the Am Nat journal office of course!
1) The manuscript arrives in the web system. One of us in the journal office gives it what the system calls a technical check--Is the PDF readable? Did the math symbols turn into tiny empty boxes? Is it double spaced? We try to minimize annoyance, but reviewers hate it if isn't formatted right, so we're just trying to save you grief later.
2) The manuscript then waits for one of the three deciding editors to claim it. This depends on people's schedules, but it generally moves along every day. The deciding editor finds the time to look the manuscript over and determine whether it can fit our niche. If it seems like it can or they aren't sure, it goes to the next stage...
3) The manuscript gets assigned to an associate editor. We get manuscripts across a broad spectrum of subjects. Though we have quite a few associate editors, we sometimes struggle to get a manuscript assigned. AEs have busy schedules and not all have the expertise needed for that manuscript. We also avoid loading up an AE all at once.
4) If the manuscript seems like it might fit our niche, the AE then develops a list of six suggested reviewers to send to the journal office. If the manuscript is a bit of a stretch for the AE, then developing that list can take a bit of time and exploration.
5) The journal office takes that list and checks for availability and some basic conflicts of interest. We try to give reviewers at least two months off between assignments. Then two reviewers are invited to review. If we don't get a response to the invitation in a few days, we follow up, wait a day, and then move down the list until we find two reviewers who agree to review. As can be imagined, this process can take some time for some manuscripts especially at some busy times of year. If we run out of names, we ask the AE for more suggestions and start the process over.
6) The standard due date for a review is 21 days after the reviewer agrees to review.
7) When the reviews are completed, the journal office checks them over to make sure the fields are filled out, there aren't any obvious missing bits, and any attachments uploaded correctly. When both reviews are in, the manuscript is returned to the associate editor for a recommendation. The deadline for the recommendation is two weeks since we expect that an AE may have to set aside a considerable block of time to sort out what needs to happen next.
8) The AE writes the recommendation and the manuscript moves back to the deciding editor, who reads over the whole package--manuscript, reviews, and recommendation--before writing the decision letter.
9) Finally, the decision letter is assembled and sent by the journal office.
We try to keep a manuscript moving along, but there are many steps when many busy people might take a little longer. We in the office work regular office hours (and have vacations and weekends and sick days), so if you submit your paper late on Friday, you won't hear from us until Monday.
The problem is always how to balance thorough with timely. When thorough review works well, it works very well indeed. I really appreciated how much it could mean for an author when I read Meghan Duffy's blog post about how review at Am Nat improved her paper:
http://dynamicecology.wordpress.com/2012/10/16/the-paper-that-ecology-rejected-that-later-won-the-mercer-award/
So when it takes a little longer, we ARE trying to get you the most useful feedback we can in as timely a period as we can, while trying to gauge whether the manuscript fits our niche.
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