Introduction to peer review

Peer review exists to ensure that journals publish good science. This benefits the entire scientific community.

Sometimes scientists find the peer review process intimidating because it can lead to the rejection of their manuscript. Keep in mind that revisions and improvement are part of the publication process and actually help raise the quality of your manuscript.

Peer review is a positive process

Peer review is an integral part of scientific publishing that confirms the validity of the science reported. Peer reviewers are experts who volunteer their time to help improve the journal manuscripts they review—they offer authors free advice.

Through the peer review process, manuscripts should become:

More robust: Peer reviewers may point out gaps in your paper that require more explanation or additional experiments.
Easier to read: If parts of your paper are difficult to understand, reviewers can tell you so that you can fix them.
More useful: Peer reviewers also consider the importance of your paper to others in your field.

Of course, in addition to offering authors advice, another important purpose of peer review is to make sure that the manuscripts the journal eventually publishes are of high quality. If a journal publishes too many low-quality manuscripts, its reputation and number of readers will decline.

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Original URL: http://www.springer.com/authors/journal+authors/journal+authors+academy?SGWID=0-1726414-12-837828-0

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