A thank you to our peer reviewers

Abstract

We would like to thank our peer reviewers who take the time to submit thoughtful contributions to Clinical Microbiology and Infection. We know how much time and effort goes into writing a good peer review, and we deeply value the input of reviewers who volunteer their time and expertise to provide essential feedback that ensures the high quality of research published in each issue of the journal. It is important to learn from our peer reviewers. Though it is not always easy to define a good peer review, we have interviewed three of our top peer reviewers who were given high grading by our editors and asked them to tell us what constitutes a good peer review. To put their advice in context, we have also asked them to tell us about themselves, including which stage of their career they are at and what research or clinical work they are doing. The three reviewers are Dafna Yahav (Beilinson Hospital, Rabin Medical Centre, Department of Medicine E, Tel-Aviv, Israel), Paul Loubet (APHP, Hopital Bichat-Claude Bernard Infectious Diseases, Paris, France) and Matthijs C. Brouwer (Department of Neurology, Centre of Infection and Immunity Amsterdam, Academic Medical Centre, University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, the Netherlands). In response to what makes a good peer review, Dafna Yahav writes in her interview that a good peer review ‘starts with the consideration of the study's question in general—is it interesting, relevant and innovative (or at least not completely resolved), is it appropriate for the specific journal? The next step would be to consider whether the methods used are those most appropriate to answer this.’ Matthijs C. Brouwer explains in his interview that a good peer review ‘critically assesses the research question and whether the methodology used is adequate to answer the question. Sometimes the right question is asked but the method used is insufficient to get the right answer. On the other hand, well-performed studies may lack a relevant research question and are therefore not very informative from a clinical or scientific point of view. Whether the research question is answered positively or negatively should not matter as long as the question is relevant and the right methods are used to answer it.’ We also asked our reviewers what constitutes a bad peer review. Paul Loubet suggests that ‘a bad review may be due to a superficial reading of the article and to the fact of not taking into account the most recent data in the literature.’ In contrast, Dafna Yahav offers that a bad peer review ‘would be someone aiming only to decide whether a manuscript should be accepted or not.’ The complete interviews can be found on our website (see Supplementary material) and on the ESCMID Facebook page. We also shared similar interviews last year with three other peer reviewers. These interviews can be found in the Editorial Note: What can we learn from our peer reviewers [[1]Leibovici L. What can we learn from our peer reviewers.Clin Microbiol Infect. 2017; 23: 687Abstract Full Text Full Text PDF PubMed Scopus (6) Google Scholar]. We appreciate our peer reviewers for taking the time and effort necessary to provide insightful guidance, and we try to show our appreciation to our reviewers. Each year we send letters recognizing the efforts of our best reviewers. Peer reviewers who write a review within 2 weeks are granted a complimentary online 1-year subscription to Clinical Microbiology and Infection. During the 2017 ECCMID in Vienna and the 2018 ECCMID in Madrid Clinical Microbiology and Infection and Elsevier hosted a dinner to which we invited our outstanding peer reviewers. Our top five peer reviewers were also awarded free registration to the 2018 ECCMID in Madrid. Our complete list of reviewers for 2017 can be found on our website (see Supplementary material). As always, we would like to hear from you. If you have any comments or suggestions on the peer-review process, we would be pleased to receive them. Editorial Note: Not peer-reviewed. The authors report no funding or conflicts of interest. The following is the supplementary data related to this article: Download .docx (.06 MB) Help with docx files Download .doc (.04 MB) Help with doc files Download .doc (.19 MB) Help with doc files Download .doc (.22 MB) Help with doc files