Is it OK to mentor someone who is writing a peer review?
March 15, 2013 Filed under Blog, Featured, Publishing, Reviewing, Uncategorized
Brian Curran asks:
I would like to hear your thoughts regarding the review process and young (or inexperienced) reviewers. I’ve reviewed just a handful of manuscripts, so it’s safe to say I’m inexperienced.
Having a mentor or two guiding us relatively inexperienced reviewers through the process might prove to be beneficial and could serve to strengthen the review, much in the same way as an internal review strengthens a manuscript prior to formal submission. But is it appropriate for a reviewer to seek out assistance from someone more experienced so that the review is (in theory at least) a bit stronger?
The short answer to your question is that as long as your mentor treats the manuscript confidentially, then I personally wouldn’t have a problem with it.
Some journals say that if you discuss a manuscript in review with someone else then you have to disclose that to the Editor. If your mentor was critiquing the science of the manuscript along with your comments, then I would tend to agree that his or her name should be disclosed to the Editor. If your mentor was just helping you craft your words better and helped you write the review in the proper format, then I wouldn’t bother reporting it. We all seek out advice at some point or another when writing our reviews. Colleagues will pop into my office to get a bit of advice, or I will wander down the hall to discuss the review I’m writing. It’s perfectly natural to do so.
What if you don’t have a mentor nearby? The internet age of open-access journals with different peer-review processes have made it easier to see what good (and bad) reviews look like. For example, some journals (e.g., Electronic Journal of Severe Storms Meteorology) posts its reviews online, so you can see the back-and-forth banter between the authors and the reviewers. These are usually pretty high-quality discussions. You can then model your approach after these examples. Another publisher who allows the public to see the reviews of published papers online is the European Geophysical Union, in particular Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics. The quality there is more variable, with some reviews being quite detailed. Other reviews are more cursory.
(Image from http://gatewaytogold.com/the-lost-art-of-mentorship/)
I agree that an inexperienced reviewer should be able to seek the guidance of someone more experienced, but that additional reviewer should be identified when the review is submitted to the editor whenever s/he contributes substantive comments (not just wordsmithing).