I spent the past week writing up a peer-review for a article that was submitted to PLOS Biology and I thought that it will be a good idea to write a short story sharing some personal tips and tricks on how to peer-review and write a peer-review report. This is my second peer-review this year (and probably the last one of the year) and although it requires quite a bit of time and effort, I have to say that I thoroughly enjoyed the entire process. Not only does it allow me to see/ know what other researchers are working on, it is also a good opportunity to use my experiences and knowledge on the subject matter to help authors improve their articles by way of providing suggestions, pointing out issues (constructively) and even challenging their observations.
I also highly advocate for students to take on active roles as peer-reviewers, even if it is just an exercise. It is an experience that is way too fun to miss out!
The goal here is to come up with a report that is professional, objective, clear and organized. Before that, there are three things I will like to point out: 1) The format of the report may vary based on the type of journal, 2) The expectations and process of peer-reviewing may be different across fields/ journals, 3) The assumption is that the subject matter of article that you are peer-reviewing is within your expertise.
To begin, a peer review report is NOT an avenue for you to criticize and point out flaws in the works of others. It is an opportunity to critically interrogate the Science, to commend the study, point out major issues (if any) and raise questions where necessary. The language style has to be formal and non-personal e.g. use words like ‘the authors’ and ‘they’ instead of ‘you’. Finally, tone has to be polite, neutral and constructive.
Here are some examples to better illustrate what I mean:
NO: There are many spelling mistakes and you have to learn to write better.
YES: The authors should correct the spelling errors in the text and revise the language more in order to improve the flow of the article. Together, this will help to promote better reading and understanding of the article in whole.
NO: Figure 1B looks horrible and does not make any sense.
YES: Figure 1B appears to be inconsistent with the conclusion made by the authors. It should be revisited and rectified accordingly.
Or
YES: The morphology of the cells presented in figure 1B appears to be atypical of cardiomyocytes. The authors should revisit the figure and clarify accordingly.
NO: The fold change in expression is not significant and you have just misinterpreted the results.
YES: Unfortunately, the data presented does not seem to justify the authors’ conclusion regarding x due to the lack of statistical significance. The authors may have made an inaccurate conclusion about x.
I generally follow a certain format when writing up my peer-review report:
1. Short summary of the research
Start your report of with a short summary ( 1 – 2 paragraphs) of the article you are peer-reviewing (e.g. Pek et al. utilized patient iPSCs to study the molecular pathogenesis of diabetes. First they describe… etc). This is important is making sure that you understand the premise of the study and have an idea what the authors are reporting on.
Following that, you should include 1-2 lines summarizing your overall impressions (e.g. The study has value-added the field by uncovering the role played by NFKB signaling in liver regeneration. The data presented by the authors were clear and convincing. The experimental workflow is sound and the article is well-organized as a whole).
Then end this portion with a caveat so as to permit a smooth transition to the considerations/ issues you have noted in the article (e.g. ‘However, there are certain pointers that the authors may wish to address before publication.’).
2. Strengths
In this section, highlight the strengths of the paper and emphasize on what the authors did right. Start by reiterating the discoveries made by the authors (e.g. The authors revealed a rare pool of hepatocyte progenitor cells that were able repopulate the liver upon chronic injury.) You may also praise the techniques that they have used in the study (e.g. By using advance single-cell RNA sequencing, the authors…). Recognize the authors’ efforts in determining underlying molecular mechanisms, compliment their in vivo experiments and commend them for having good controls and biological replicates.
3. Considerations
In the ‘considerations’ section, point out the specifics in which you feel the authors have to improve on. I like to categorize this section into two subsections – major and minor points.
Major points
This subsection should be reserved for addressing more critical issues such as lack of data/evidence, experiments lacking proper controls, misinterpretation of data, data inconsistent with claim, conceptual errors, alarmingly abnormal data.
I like to address the major points results-by-results. It helps by numbering each point, with reference to specific section, page and line number. Importantly, if you correcting/ disagreeing with the authors’ claims, please cite studies to support your rebuttals/ corrections.
These are some examples:
Minor points
This subsection is reserved for addressing small but important issues such as missing citations, missing scale bars, spelling errors, mislabeling, missing labels, missing details from ‘materials and methods’ or figure legends. It is also important to make sure that the authors are using the right nomenclature for genes and proteins throughout the paper. I am surprised that many people are still confused/ not attentive towards that. E.g. Krt8 (gene, mouse) and KRT8 (protein, mouse), KRT8 (gene, human), KRT8 (protein, human).
I like to address the minor points methodically, numbering each point with reference to the figure or text, page and line number. For example:
1. Figure S3 (page 38) – The authors should add ‘PE’ in the x-axis of their FACs plot and also indicate what the y-axis represents.
2. Results 4 (page 27, line 487) – The authors should provide a citation for this statement.
4. Overall thoughts
Here, you summarize what you have written in the report heretofore. I like to end this section with mentioning to the authors that they should consider the suggestions mentioned to substantiate their claims and bring clarity to their findings. They should then amend their discussions accordingly.
5. References
Lastly, remember to add the appropriate references if you have cited other studies in the ‘considerations’ section.
Now you have finished and submitted the report, what is next?
After reading through the article and writing up the bulk of the report, you should already have a sense of whether the Science illustrated in the paper is sound and worthy of publication. Whilst it is important to maintain a relatively neutral tone throughout, it is also important to determine at the very end if the article should or should not be published. Certainly, the ultimate decision goes back to the editors of the journal but most journals do provide avenues for reviewers to provide their opinions to the editors in confidence. Sometimes, there might be a questionnaire/ feedback column where you can clearly state your stance on whether the article should be published or not and you can also decide if you wish to review the revised article again, or not. Naturally, your stance would be backed up by the contents of your peer-review report.
If you need more good examples of peer-review reports, here is a good resource for you: https://f1000research.com/for-referees/peer-reviewing-tips/examples
Hope you have found this story helpful. Good luck and have fun peer-reviewing!
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