What is Peer Review?

This short Library video will define peer review and discuss why it is important to your research

What is Peer Review?

This short Library video will define peer-review and discuss why it is important. Peer-review is a process designed to add accountability to the research and publication process with the goal of making published research more reliable. Before scholarly works are published, they are reviewed by researchers in a relevant field who provide feedback and make recommendations as to whether the work should be accepted, rejected, or revised and resubmitted.

Although the peer-review process is used for various scholarly formats, we’re going to focus on the process for peer-reviewed journal articles.

How does it work?

First, a paper is submitted to an academic journal where it is screened by an editor. The editor either rejects the article or sends it to researchers working in the subject area. These researchers are called peer-reviewers or referees. In many cases the peer-review process is anonymous, with only the editor knowing the names of the original author or the reviewers.

Peer-reviewers check the article for things like originality, significance, reproducibility, trustworthiness, and adherence to the methods and rigour of the discipline. Reviewers also ensure that arguments are properly supported and identify inconsistencies or gaps in the research. They then recommend to the journal editor whether the paper should be accepted, rejected, or revised and resubmitted.

If revisions are requested, the journal editor will send the article back to the author to make changes based on the reviewers' suggestions.

Once the requested revisions are made, the journal publishes the article. Sometimes there are multiple rounds of revisions before an article is published.

The peer review process can take a long time – often 6 months to a year, or more! - and is part of the reason that scholarly publishing can take much longer than non-scholarly publishing.

If you need help finding peer-reviewed articles or want to know whether an article is peer-reviewed,

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[Music: A Bright Future by Indie Box. Retrieved from https://www.bensound.com]