Ensuring Review Quality Through Strategic Reviewer Selection

Ensuring a rigorous peer review process involves careful selection of reviewers with the appropriate expertise and ethical standing, and managing their conduct throughout the process.

Match Expertise to Content

Editors must match reviewers with the scope and subject area of the content in a manuscript to get the best reviews possible. Assigned reviewers should have expertise matching the scope of the content. Potential reviewers should provide accurate personal and professional information representing their expertise.

Ensure Qualifications

Reviewers must be qualified.

Verify Freedom from Conflicts of Interest (CoIs)

Reviewers must be free of conflicts of interest. Policies should address conflicts of interest for reviewers. Reviewers should declare potential conflicts and notify the journal if one arises or is discovered. Editors managing manuscripts must also be free of CoI.

Check for Ethics or Performance Concerns

Assigned reviewers should have no known ethics or performance concerns. Journals should have systems for assessing the performance of reviewers and removing those whose performance is not acceptable. For resubmissions, reviewers who gave unclear/invalid feedback or used inappropriate language should not be re-invited.

Consider Author Recommendations/Exclusions (if policy allows)

Journals should have policies on author-recommended and excluded reviewers. Policies should state whether author suggestions are considered.

Maintain Confidentiality

Reviewers must respect the confidentiality of material supplied to them and may not discuss unpublished manuscripts with colleagues or use the information in their own work. Material submitted to the journal must remain confidential while under review. Do not disclose information obtained during the peer review process for personal advantage or to disadvantage others.

Assign Sufficient Reviewers

Journals should define how many reviewers review each manuscript. For conflicting reviewer decisions, initiating a double decision process or seeking additional reports might be necessary.

Provide Clear Guidance and Training

Journals should provide training for reviewers and establish policies on diverse aspects of peer review. Explicit guidance should be provided to reviewers on what is expected of them. Instructions should clarify policies on tone, language quality, and content, specifying that comments should be constructive, courteous, and clear. Reviewers should be objective and constructive. They should bear in mind that the editor requires a fair, honest, and unbiased assessment of the strengths and weaknesses of the manuscript.

Manage Reviewer Activity

Reviewers should respond promptly to invitations and inform the journal of any delays. Peer review should be undertaken in a timely fashion to prevent undue delays, and the process should be monitored regularly.

Ensure Independence

Individuals obtaining advice on manuscripts from experts in the subject area (peer review) should not be part of the journal's editorial team. However, editorial board members can conduct peer review. If an editor handles a manuscript and provides a review themselves, this should be done transparently and not under the guise of an anonymous reviewer. If supervisors involve students or junior researchers, they must request permission from the editor, and the student should be acknowledged as the reviewer of record.

These steps are crucial for a new journal's Editorial Office to pay attention to when establishing its peer review process. The chosen peer-review model (e.g., single-anonymous, double-anonymous, open) influences confidentiality and ownership of the review. Journals should adopt a process appropriate for their field of work and available resources/systems. The specifics of ethical oversight during the review process may also be particularly important depending on the journal's domain, requiring reviewers to consider aspects like ethical approvals, consent, and data integrity as part of their assessment.