Many academics are interested in becoming peer reviewers for academic journals but may not know what the process entails or what is expected of them. This can be especially true for early career researchers.
My advisor recently recommended that I must start peer reviewing articles for academic journals. Not only is peer review a great way to give back to the community, and is an important part of CV development, but it gives you an insider view into how journals operate and what they are looking for in an article.
Peer review is integral to scientific progress, so when I got my first article for review in my email, I knew that in order to do the best possible work, I would have to first learn how to review an article, and then how to best write the review. Just as one needs to learn the academic conventions for writing articles, those wanting to write high quality peer reviews must learn the academic conventions for analyzing and writing peer reviews.
As part of their Researcher Academy, Elesevier, an information, analytics, and publishing company, offers a free Certified Peer Reviewer Course. This ip blog post seeks to answer the question, “Is it worth it?”
The course consists of an introduction, four modules, and an assessment:
- Introduction:
- Module 1:
- Module 2:
- Module 3:
- Module 4:
- Assessment
Analysis:
The biggest problem with the course is production. In particular, the audio needs to be re-recorded for most, if not all, of the lectures. It sounds as if recorded at home, with poor equipment and little to no mixing or mastering. There are odd things like video 3.3 coming up first, and the videos being inconsistently labeled. For example, modules one and three start with videos 1.1 and 3.1, but modules two and four start with 2.0 and 4.0. This leaves one clicking around different areas of the site trying to make sure they’ve found all of the videos. While none of this affects the content, this lack in production makes one ask the question, “If you’re going to do it, why not do it right?”
But we are not here for the production value, we’re here for the content.
There is a lot of overlapping content. The lecturers don’t seem to have talked with one another or looked into eachothers’ content. While the content that overlaps is the most important, i.e. “be cordial, timely, professional, etc.,” the series could be better planned and orchestrated to eliminate overlap.
However, the content in general is excellent. In particular, video 3.1 How to write a helpful peer review, is great. And if you’re only going to watch one video, I recommend it be this one. In it, Zoe Mullan, Editor-in-Chief of The Lancet Global Health, goes through general considerations, checklists and guidelines, overall structure, and a section by section analysis (this last part is particularly helpful). I downloaded the slides from the lecture (which you can do for most of the videos), and referred to it while writing my review.
After watching the videos, there is an easy multiple-choice test (with unlimited attempts allowed per question, so don’t have any test anxiety about it). Upon completion of the assessment with a score of 100%, you’re given a digital certificate of completion.
In conclusion, the lack in production is made up for with exceptional content. After watching all of the videos, I felt confident and prepared to tackle my first peer review (something I did not feel before taking the course.). I believe it to have gone well and am happy with the result. If you’re wanting to get started in peer reviewing, or improve your reviews, I highly recommend the course.
Paul T Johnson
an interative process 