Should peer reviewers be suggested by authors?

A recent editorial by Mounir Fawzi in Middle East Current Psychiatry asks the above question. The paper concludes: Traditionally, peer reviewers are designated by the editor. However, a recent trend, which is followed by the MECPsych, is to give authors an opportunity to suggest reviewers for their manuscripts. A few studies have compared author-suggested reviewers […]

Should quality peer reviewers be recognized by the journal?

I came across this web post and thought this Editor’s idea for recognizing the top 8% of reviewers was a pretty good idea. I admit it might be some work to implement, but the Editor had a formula to do it, reducing the work involved. I am a big fan of this idea for several […]

Reviewer wants “media-friendly schematic”

This comment appeared in a review of a paper for which I am serving as Editor. “I suggest creating a media-friendly schematic showing the basic conclusions of how ….” Given all the recent publicity about …, I believe this paper will attract media interest, and a schematic like this will be useful for explaining the […]

The Editor’s Royal Flush

Lately, I’ve been seeing quite a few manuscripts sent out for review that receive one of the following sets of reviews: • reject, accept, major revisions • reject, minor revisions, major revisions I guess these are the equivalent of a royal flush in cards, although I’m not sure the result is as hoped for by […]

Should reviews be anonymous?

Probably ever since peer review started, authors have complained about it. If the process were started today, would it take on the same form? Probably not, but what form would it take? Would reviewers continue to be anonymous? As my career has developed, a greater percentage of my reviews over time have been nonanonymous, but […]