It’s been a little while since I posted some academic tips, I think mostly because I spent a lot of last year in that space whilst writing It Shouldn’t Happen to a PhD Student. I’ve been speaking to a few people recently, however, who have shown an interest in how the review process works for scientific papers and how they could get started. It felt timely, therefore, to some of what came to mind down in a blog.

It’s probably worth bearing in mind when you are reading this that every journal is slightly different, some will require very long discussion sections, some will prefer word count to be focused on results sections. This blog will cover the points that are generally important to consider as part of a review, but there will always be journal specific factors that you need to take into consideration. Hopefully it will still act as a helpful starting point.

What are the benefits of undertaking peer review?

There are many benefits of being a reviewer for scientific journals, but let’s get this out of the way at the start, money is not one of them, no you do not get paid. You don’t even get a discount to publish in the journals you review for. What you do get is a lot of experience of seeing papers going through various levels of development. You get to spend time reflecting on your reaction to manuscripts and exploring what leads to the reaction of ‘this paper is amazing’ or ‘this paper is wrong somehow’. Time is one of the things that is limited for almost everyone, and so having a reason to carve out time for this type of reflection is beneficial for both you and the wider scientific community. After all, papers don’t get published if no one takes the time to participate in peer review.

The thing that I personally have found most valuable after over a decade of doing this, is learning to the look at the bones and structure of a paper and being able to provide supportive feedback on how some changes to that structure could make the end result better. Going through this process has allowed me to learn so much, so that when I am developing the structure and content for my own papers I apply the lessons I have learnt from reflecting during reviewing papers for others. I hope this makes the review process for those looking at my own papers easier, as I’ve already acted as my own reviewer with a critical eye before I even submit a paper, but it definitely helps me reduce the number of drafts I produce.

One final, very unique opportunity you get as a reviewer, is that you get to see the reviews that others provide. Once all the reviews are in you will be able to access the reviews that others provide, either online or in the email sent out. This is always very interesting as it is the only circumstance where you can see what others have taken away from reading the same manuscript. It is fascinating to see whether others come to the same conclusions vs acceptance etc, and also to see what points they’ve noted. This is a great learning opportunity, and even after all this time I make sure to look, reflect, and learn from what others have said.

How to get involved?

Once you begin to publish your own scientific papers you will tend to quite naturally end up being involved as a reviewer, because of the fact that your details and expertise will then be part of the database that editors from a journal will select reviewers from. There are other ways to get involved however:

• Email an editor to volunteer
• Become part of journal junior editor programme
• Ask your supervisor to put you forward when they received review invitations they can’t accomodate
• Ask your supervisor/mentor to send you articles so that you could review in parallel and compare comments
• Join a journal club, not quite the same but a similar experience that will help
• Present at conferences, as editors may remember your name
• A more recent route in is also to review Pre Prints, where you leave your name and comments which may be picked up by an editor further down the line

The more reviews you do, the more you will be asked to do, and so the main thing is to just start and more opportunities will follow.

Principles for reviewing

There are a number of principles or considerations that I try and stick to that I have listed below, but there is one that I think is worth talking about before I discuss the others. This one is simple. Don’t be a jerk. Peer reviews are usually anonymous but this isn’t a license to say anything you wouldn’t say to someone’s face.

Now that’s done, onto some other points to consider:

• Don’t be ‘that reviewer’ who tells authors to reference your papers, that’s not really the point of peer review
• Remain impartial, it doesn’t matter if the author is your best friend, a complete unknown, or a star of their field, everyone is entitled to the same level of review. If you can’t be impartial then decline the invite
• Don’t accept review requests that you know you won’t be able to fit into your diary, it just delays things for everyone
• Reflect on whether you have the skills and knowledge to fulfil a review request. Over time I have been asked to review in all kinds of areas and I deliberately ask myself every time whether I am the right person to undertake the review
• Focus on communication, both to the editor and the author. Make your points concise and structured in the way you would like to receive them as an author (often in a bullet pointed list, with a single comment per bullet point). If you are going to be delayed in returning your review let the editor know
• Rarely, I have reviewed papers where I felt the conclusions or practice was actually unsafe. This has only happened a couple of times, but when it has I have communicated with the editor as well as adding comments, as it had patient safety implications. Often these papers won’t reach review but if they do, it is key that they are escalated
• Be aware of whether you should be commenting on how well written the article is. Language should be accessible, but it is wrong to discriminate against authors who may not be writing in their first language, and your main purpose is to review the science, not to mark an English essay

Available tools

It can be a bit intimidating reviewing papers when you start, and it can be difficult to know where to begin. There are some tools that can help make this a little easier. My two favourites are ORION and CONSORT. ORION is linked to outbreak papers, and CONSORT is linked to randomised clinical trials. ORION is quite old now, but CONSORT was updated last year (2025).

ORION exists to help authors put together papers that are linked to outbreaks and infection control, and most helpfully comes with a checklist. This checklist can also be really helpful during a review to help you frame your response and pin down things that might be missing. Not all points will be suitable for all papers, so bear that in mind, but as a tool to assist you it is a helpful starter for 10.

CONSORT is a very similar tool for randomised trials. Again, even if you are looking at a paper that is not randomised but has another form of clinical trial, it can be a useful aid to help your thinking and a framework to support your review.

CONSORT, similar to ORION also has a checklist, which can be a useful tool to enable you to make notes when reviewing papers.

My review process

Once you have accepted an invitation to be a reviewer for a scientific paper you will get a link to log in and download the article. You will then have a period, usually two weeks, to submit your review.

Once I have the paper downloaded, I initially read it for an overview to get a feel for the article prior to reviewing each section in detail. I then consider which of the available options for outcome I think it might fall into:

• Reject
• Accept without changes
• Accept minor revisions
• Accept major revisions

Bear in mind when you go in to review in detail you may change your mind, and you need to remain open, but the reason I do this general overview is because the level of feedback I give, and thus the level of note taking required, will depend on the likely outcome. In general, I will provide more detailed notes for ‘accept with major revisions’ than I will for a reject, as I want to support the authors in having the best outcome possible and that requires a more in depth response.

From these general notes I write an opening review summary, which will includes which gaps I think the paper addresses, the benefits to the academic specialty, and my overall comments about what is good, and where it could be improved. I then move on and makes notes on each manuscript section in detail; which I use to formulate a more detailed list of reviewers comments point by point in order to make it easier for the authors to respond.

Title

My main focus when looking at the title is whether it accurately reflects what is in the paper. I enjoy a fun title, but there are some articles where titles act as the equivalent of ‘click bait’ and can lead the reader in a way that is not reflective of the data. Most of the time the title is fine, but I have had a few occasions where I’ve had to feedback that it needs to be better reflect the outcomes and research question based on the evidence presented.

Abstract

Whilst I have written this section at the top of the sections, because I’ve covered them in order, I always review the abstract last once I’ve got a full understanding of the rest of the paper.

The abstract should act as a stand alone summary, as many readers will read it alone and without additional context prior to decided whether to down load a paper. It should clearly communicate the research question, important components of the methodology, and accurately summarise the results. There can sometimes be a tendency for abstract to over call the results and conclusions so that people engage with the paper, and so this is something I give a lot of consideration to when reviewing.

I personally love an abstract with clear sub-headings as I find this makes them easier to read and review, but bear in mind that the format is based on the style of the individual journal, so don’t feedback on components like this without understanding the journal guidance. It is one of the benefits of reviewing for journals that you know well, or have submitted to yourself, that you are more aware of their editorial style requirements and so won’t need to research this as part of the review process.

Introduction

An introduction should introduce the relevant literature that the reader needs to understand the context of the rest of the paper.

When looking at an introduction I will consider:

• Do the authors introduce concepts in other sections that they haven’t covered for understanding in the introduction?
• How balanced are the references included, are they presenting significant bias by the papers they’ve chosen to include? (NB every paper is telling ‘a story’ and so there will always be some of this but it needs to not be extreme)
• Are the references included suitable, relatively recent, and from peer reviewed journals?

The introduction is the foundation of the paper and so this needs to be right to support the reader in being able to fully access the content that follows it. It also needs to fully articulate the research question that is being addressed.

Methods

For a scientific paper, the main question to evaluate the methods is whether from reading them you could reproduce the paper. Do the authors list all the pertinent details? I often read methods sections and take myself through how they are laid out step by step to decide whether I could actually do that experiment myself. You’d be amazed at the number of times this isn’t possible. Often authors have such an understanding of their work that they make assumptions about what the reader will know, and therefore need to be asked to add in further details. For outbreak papers, authors will often assume you know something about their hospital or patient population, which is often not the case. The method section is somewhere where a CONSORT or ORION checklist can really help you to ensure that all the key components are there.

The methods should also include statements linked to ethical requirements for the study. There is also sometimes a specific ethics statement at the end of the paper, so it is worth making sure that you review both together if present. Again, not method specific but something I tend to take into account as part of method review, are disclosures. Was the study funded by a manufacturer or supplier who is listed in the method section? It is not wrong to undertake sponsored work, and often great science comes out of collaboration, but knowing this is the case and taking it into account when you are reviewing and understanding how it may or may not have impacted how the study was undertaken is important.

The other key thing to reflect on when reading the methods is whether the method chosen is actually the most appropriate method for addressing the research question asked. There are often many different ways to approach a question, and so there be many suitable method approaches meaning it’s important to not be prescriptive, but not all methods may appropriate. This is a point where you need to walk a fine line. You can’t ask someone to completely change their research method as even with major corrections you can only ask for clarifications or some amount of additional work, so if the flaw is fundamental this is one of the reasons I would reject a paper.

Results

The overarching question when looking at any results section is do the findings directly answer the research question posed in the introduction. Sometimes authors can end up answering a different question to the one originally posed, as their results lead them in a different direction, but this isn’t really acceptable in a paper where you have to have a thread through each section that makes sense to the reader.

The other things that are worth paying attention to in a results section include:

• Are the figures and tables appropriate?
• Do the figure and/or table legends permit them to be reviewed in isolation from the text?
• Are error bars or other components to aid interpretation present?
• Is all data represented i.e. data doesn’t feel cherry picked from what was stated in the methods?
• Has statistical analysis been undertaken when it should have?
• Is any statistical analysis undertaken appropriate?
• Is the full dataset available in an appendix or public access database (if appropriate)?

Discussion

The main thing I am looking for in a discussion is that the authors have undertaken a thorough critique of their results in the context of the available literature and related it back to their original research question. This means that I don’t expect them to have just quoted a lot of their own previous work in order to support their interpretation of their current results, as this can introduce unnecessary bias. I expect a range of references to be used, most of which I would expect to be recent, rather than from the 90’s. As I said previously, every paper will be telling a story, but I don’t expect it to be sales pitch. I want to see the results interpreted within the context of relevant literature, and thought demonstrated about discrepancies and findings that may look like outliers.

I also expect authors to have highlighted limitations of their study and their interpretation. If there is potential bias I would like it acknowledged here alongside how easy the results may be to generalise. All studies will have limitations and it is important for the reader that these are clearly stated in order to reduce over stating the outcomes, but also so that other studies can build upon the current work.

Conclusion

Conclusions are key, and also where some authors fall into the trap of trying to overly dramatise what they have achieved. It can be tempted to over state your results and your impact, everyone wants to think that their work matters, and this is the key area where reviewers can support when looking at conclusions. It is crucial that the conclusion are representative of the work and stated within the context of the research question asked. This section is often quite small, but it is however incredibly important to get right, and reviewers can really help support authors in making sure this happens.

Owning your feedback

You will often be asked if you are happy to have your name associated with your review. I always say yes. Saying yes keeps it present within your mind that you are reviewing the work of people who will have worked hard to create what is in front of you. I never write something in a review that I wouldn’t be happy saying to the authors face if I met them at a conference.

Feedback should always be constructive. It should always be helpful. It should always be kind. Too often I’ve seen reviews that do not keep to these three rules and it makes me both sad and angry. Don’t be lured into taking a different approach because the review is online and feels anonymous. Character is who we are when no one is watching.

Using the learning

If you are just starting out undertaking peer review, make sure you capture what you learn from the process so that you can use it when you are next sitting down to write your next manuscript. Make notes for yourself, as well as the editor. What did you like? What worked well? What are the common errors that you are seeing? How would you correct that in your next work?

Reviewing is a unique opportunity, both to give back to your profession, and to make your own work better. Make sure you maximise this opportunity and when you’ve learnt how to do it well…pay it forward for others to benefit.

Other resources

https://authors.wiley.com/Reviewers/journal-reviewers/how-to-perform-a-peer-review/step-by-step-guide-to-reviewing-a-manuscript.html

https://www.britishjournalofnursing.com/content/top-ten-tips/essential-principles-for-peer-reviewing

https://www.elsevier.com/en-gb/reviewer/how-to-review

All opinions in this blog are my own

If you’d like more academic tips, think about checking out my book on thriving in the world of academia: