VT21 Scientific Writing and Presentation

Assignment 5B: Read the assigned literature on the peer review process. Prepare a 3-

4 pages summary of your learnings that demonstrate your understanding of: The peer-
review process: how do you conduct a peer-review and how to respond to a peer

review when you receive feedback from a journal. Be sure to identify key criteria that
can be used to review and judge a scientific paper.

1. The peer review process:

Here are the couple of key points to conduct a peer review process, which
are discussed below as follows:

a. Scientific quality of the research:

The first step is to check whether the results and methods used in the article
are sufficient to allow the article to be accepted. Moreover, it is also
important to check if the kind of data, methods, analysis provided are
sufficient to support the conclusions and claims made by the author(s).

b. Presentations of the article:

The second most important point of a peer review process is to check if the
presentation is good enough, clear, precise and well written. It is a
customary to check if the article is written well with correct grammar and
without any major error(s). The title and keywords should be specific and
should reflect the content of the manuscript. A well written abstract which
indicate the importance and significance should also be checked in detail.
There are however certain more points such as, notions, synonyms,
symbols, abbreviations, names, figures, tables etc should also be checked
in a peer review, to decide whether or not the article meets the expectation
of the journal’s level of the content.

c. Rating:
It is sometimes good to assign a rating on the reviewer-form provided and
rank the manuscript relative to other work in the same field. The typical

Suprokash Hazra (PhD student in Mathematics, Mid Sweden University)

 VT21 Scientific Writing and Presentation

ratings could be one of the followings: 1. strong accept (top 10%), 2. Accept
(10-20%), 3. Neutral (20-40%), 4. Reject (40-60%), 5. Strong Reject
(>60%). It is often a good idea to justify the recommendations with
concrete evidence and specific examples.

d. Confidentiality:
The most important point is the confidentiality. There are two different type
confidentiality. One, is to provide a few confidential comments (which will
not be returned to the authors) regarding the significance of the manuscript
and manuscript’s suitability for the possible publication in the journal.

The second type is that the reviewer should also maintain confidentiality
about the existence and material provided of the manuscript. It is not
appropriate and accepted to share the data provided in the manuscript or
to discuss or share it with others. Even before publication it is also not
appropriate to reveal the existence of the submission.

e. Comments for authors:

On the reviewer form, it is always good to provide specific comments or
summary, so that the authors know what they need to improve or include
in the article for the possible publication. The summary should be specific,
professional and respectful, as the authors will be reading these comments
too. It is also good point to mention what the reviewer liked about the
manuscript. One final note is to be certain that reviewer’s comments to the
author(s) are consistent with the rating or recommendation.

f. Other type of plagiarism:

The reviewer must not participate in plagiarism. It is certainly a very serious
transgression and offence to collect data, results or main concepts from a
paper that is submitted, to advance reviewer’s own research work before
the original submitted manuscript is published.

Suprokash Hazra (PhD student in Mathematics, Mid Sweden University)

 VT21 Scientific Writing and Presentation

g. Conflict of Interest:
The reviewer should never have any conflict of interests while reviewing a
manuscript. The reviewer should accept manuscripts for review only in
his/her areas of expertise (or sometimes close to his/her research
expertise). Otherwise it would be unfair to the authors if the referee does
not have the expertise to review the manuscript adequately. The reviewer
should not also have any conflict about the reviewing time and deadline,
and should also sometimes keep in mind agreeing to review only those
manuscripts that can be completed on time.

2. Key points to respond to a peer review (after receiving

feedback from the journal):

Here are couple of key points to keep in mind to respond to a peer review,
as follows:

a. Making a note of a list of essential vs. unessential requests for

prioritizing my research work and responding to all the request one
by one.

b. Deciding whether I will need some more time to conduct additional

experiments for the research.

c. Making sure I have a suitable system for responding to each comment

from the reviewer, and demonstrating my changes properly. If it is
asked to remove or add some further points from the journal it is
good to follow the request and making the necessary changes as
asked.

Suprokash Hazra (PhD student in Mathematics, Mid Sweden University)

 VT21 Scientific Writing and Presentation

d. If some additional information (like additional research data, or

methods) is asked from the journal, making sure that I have all the
required information to support my research.

e. Trying not to ignore any comments, even a minor change that is

asked.

f. After revisiting all the comments from the journal and making
necessary changes as asked it then the time to finally add a cover
letter. The key point is to keep this letter short with any possible
points that I wish to clarify further.

g. If I found reviewer advice particularly helpful, I should thank them for

their thoughtful and valuable commentary!

h. The final step is then to follow the guidelines provided from the journal
committee to re-submit the article, after making the necessary
changes.

Suprokash Hazra (PhD student in Mathematics, Mid Sweden University)