5  Review a Paper

Peer review is the system used to assess the quality of a manuscript before it is published in a journal.

Independent researchers in the relevant research area assess submitted manuscripts for originality, validity and significance to help editors determine whether a manuscript should be published in their journal.

Reviewing is the other side of the same coin as writing. It is an important skill and service for the scientific community. A good writer anticipates comments from possible reviewers and addresses them in writing. A critical review helps make a manuscript much stronger.

According to https://www.biomedcentral.com/getpublished/peer-review-process,

Peer review is an integral part of scientific publishing that confirms the validity of the manuscript. Peer reviewers are experts who volunteer their time to help improve the manuscripts they review. By undergoing peer review, manuscripts should become:

More robust - peer reviewers may point out gaps in a paper that require more explanation or additional experiments.

Easier to read - if parts of your paper are difficult to understand, reviewers can suggest changes.

More useful - peer reviewers also consider the importance of your paper to others in your field.

In this writing course, we are writing statistical projects. Here is a check list adapted from https://www.science.org/content/article/how-review-paper.

• Are the background literature and study rationale clearly articulated?
• Do the hypotheses follow logically from previous work?
• Are the statistical methods appropriate?
• Are the methods robust and well controlled?
• Is the statistical notation clearly defined?
• Were the statistical methods conducted correctly?
  
• Are the assumptions of the statistical methods clearly articulated?
• Are the assumptions of the statistical methods satisfied?
• Is the presentation of results clear and accessible?
• To what extent does the Discussion place the findings in a wider context and achieve a balance between interpretation and useful speculation versus tedious waffling?

To write a reviewer’s report, here is a template.

• A summary of the what the paper is about and how you feel about its solidity.
• List the major concerns in detail about the paper eluded in the summary.
• Go through the specific points that are not clearly presented or need to be improved, in the order they appeared in the paper.
• Finally, a list of really minor stuff (misprints, notation abuse, etc.).

Tips:

• Precisely identify the location of the concern (page number, line number, section number, etc.)
• Be as constructive as possible.
• Avoid rude or disparaging remarks.
• Back up major criticisms.
• Make the review useful for the editor as well as for the authors.