Biological Cybernetics - Guidelines for Junior Scientists reviewing for Biological Cybernetics

Jean-Marc Fellous: fellous at arizona.edu. Last edited 12/2020

Welcome to the world of peer review! The following is a brief list of do’s, don’ts and advice on how to review and some clarification regarding what is expected of you.We understand you may not (yet) be an expert in the field. Your goal is to scientifically, given the knowledge and competences you possess, assess the manuscript and make constructive comments as to how to improve it. Think about your peers (graduate students and postdoctoral fellows), and how the manuscript can help them.You will be asked your opinion in terms of rejection, resubmit with minor revisions, resubmit with major revisions or accept. This opinion should be based on a thorough review of the manuscript that includes useful feedback to the author(s). In any case, your opinion is advisory, and the final decision is left with the Editorin-Chief.After your initial review, the author(s) will respond and you will have a chance to iterate. Typically, one or two rounds of revision should be sufficient to generate a final opinion on the manuscript.Springer has some good resources regarding peer review at these links: https://www.springernature.com/gp/reviewers (this opens in a new tab)
https://www.springer.com/gp/authorseditors/authorandreviewertutorials/howtopeerreview (this opens in a new tab)

Do’s:
- Read the manuscript thoroughly. You may need to/want to read other papers to clarify some unfamiliar concepts introduced by the authors (as such reviewing can be an excellent learning opportunity!)

- Take notes as you go, especially if you notice small improvements that can be made (see below)

- Be on time and plan ahead. Authors expect a reasonable turnover… They put a lot of time and effort into writing a manuscript… we (the reviewers and editors) should respect their effort and provide them with a timely response to their submission.

- You certainly can ask advice from your advisor. If needed, you can share the manuscript with him/her, but no one else. If you do, please disclose that fact in the ‘notes to the editor’ section of the webpage, when you upload your review. Whatever level of interaction you have with your advisor, the review is yours and yours only. Feel free to reach out to the co-editor in chief who invited you should you have a question or concern.

Don’ts:
- As useful as you may want to be, your goal is not to re-write the manuscript. Limit your edits to ‘small edits’.
- Do not share the confidential manuscript with anyone else but (possibly) your advisor.

Advice:
- There are many ways to structure your review, and you are free to choose whatever structure is best suited to you and/or the scientific field the manuscript relates to. One useful structure is to subdivide your review into
1) a short paragraph summarizing the main points of the manuscript, as you understand them. These may overlap with the text of the abstract, but may also include points that might have been downplayed by the authors. Conclude this paragraph by a sentence regarding your overall impression of the paper as being suitable BICY and having interesting/relevant findings/insights/analyses (or not!);
2) a list of general comments/critiques. You can collect here remarks that pertain to several sections of the manuscript (i.e. no statistical tests, some control conditions were not presented, part of the literature not considered/cited). You can list here positive comments as well;
3) a list of detailed comments/critiques. This list is typically expressed at the page/paragraph/line level. For example, p3, second paragraph: the sentence ‘…. ‘ is unclear, please rephrase. Or p6, line 23, there is a typo, or error.
- Be fair in your review. Imagine you are the author. For example, it would not be fair to ask an author who is working in a rodent lab to confirm his/her results by repeating them in monkeys.
- Be gentle and respectful when you criticize, but be clear. If you see a flaw, it is your duty to point it out as diplomatically as possible, but without ambiguity. Use professional language.