An Overview of Peer-Review
Introduction:
This article is written after reviewing more than 760 manuscripts in less than two years. The reviewer’s role in the peer review process of judging the manuscript and the significant role in reading and writing comments that contribute to its growth and support an editor’s decision to publish the manuscript is explained. Academic and scientific research is a systematic process that includes several decisions and steps in disseminating manuscript to serve the community. An essential part of any manuscript is the findings, which are extremely important, mainly how these findings have been obtained and documented and how they will contribute to humanity and society. The process of checking and verifying the findings in the manuscript is complicated. Here comes the main role of the expert reviewer who has long experience in reading and judging manuscripts, as he can follow all sections of the manuscript and determine whether the sentences and the findings are correct or not suitable for publication. In short, a peer-review process is essential to monitor the quality of a manuscript before it is accepted for publication in a journal or conference.
The Role of Peer Review:
The main idea of peer review is to judge the manuscript by people with experience in the evaluation process and who have a lot of published articles, meaning they have a significant impact factor and cannot be given to anyone else who does not have many papers in the field of scientific research because he will judge the manuscript in the wrong directions. In addition, the reviewer must have an advanced level of English in order to be able to quickly read the manuscript, understand it, and give a correct judgment. Peer review requires the editor to assign the author’s work for investigation by experts in judging in the same field of the manuscript to verify its authenticity and ensure its suitability for scientific publication. Recently, published articles that are peer-reviewed are earned more citations and h-index than non-peer-reviewed works.
The Significant Goals:
The reviewer begins at first to make sure that the topic of the manuscript falls within the scope of the journal or conference, and if the topic is appropriate for the journal, then he begins with his decisions and writing comments after the end of each section and identifying the gaps in it. Actually, several factors significantly affect the active reviewers like lectures, committees, writing research papers, supervising students, conferences, webinars and other interests in the academic work, and also there are many household matters and special concerns in daily life. All these factors affect the evaluation of many manuscripts by reviewers. In brief, the peer review process is not complicated, but it takes time to review many manuscripts, which is why the English proficiency of reviewers must be very high. The most important thing that makes the reviewer excellent is scientific integrity because these manuscripts are a trust that must be preserved and not be used for other things. The more perfect the reviewer’s comments, the more will leave a deep impression on the journals.
Bonuses for Reviewers:
Many colleagues have asked, what are the main bonuses of peer review, and are their financial rewards? Crucially, the peer review process is purely a voluntary job, and no payment will be paid for their time and offer their services. What is availed after judging more than 760 manuscripts in journals and conferences is summarized. There are many bonuses that journals offer to reviewers, including publishing research after evaluation for free or reducing the cost of publishing or entering a group of previous archives. As for the most important bonus from the reviewer, it is to read new concepts and future ideas, to develop his ideas and his academic experience in qualitative research. The peer-review process assists reviewers to grow their knowledge about the field and publication trends in that area of research, which can considerably enhance their ability to build high-quality, publication-worthy research.
Peer-Review Platforms:
The virtual platforms supporting and verifying the reviewer’s effort are two: Publons and ReviewerCredits, where journals or conferences can, through these platforms, identify and reach excellent reviewers. Finally, the peer review process plays a huge role in judging manuscripts, correcting errors, and creating manuscripts to serve the scientific and human community.
