How do I get to peer review a paper? A PhD student asks....

Abstract

Andrew Moore Editor-in-Chief This might sound like a strange question from a PhD student: after all, aren't peer reviewers supposed to be highly experienced and qualified members of the research community? Yes, they are, but they also have to have a sharp intellect, and you don't have to be senior to have that. So I applaud the student for asking the question, because it shows an admirable ability to anticipate a problem that sooner or later faces all researchers: how to do a good peer review and do justice to your fellow researcher's manuscript? The bottom line is: ask your supervisor to be involved in the next peer review that she/he does. During my years of editorial, the number of times that I've witnessed a PhD student being explicitly involved in a peer review can be counted on the fingers of one hand. We need more! Technically speaking, the first hurdle to becoming a peer reviewer is simply physically being invited by someone in editorial to review a manuscript. So this is where I tell students how we editors find reviewers who – to the best of our knowledge – are suitably qualified and independent to review a given piece. Incidentally, I don't need to mention author-suggested reviewers here, because I've never found a PhD student named by an author as a preferred reviewer. It's a somewhat banal point, but because the easiest way for editorial to find scientists who stand a good chance of being qualified in a particular area is to search the literature in that area, a PhD student will hardly ever be found in that way – be it via an ISI Web of Science search, or from scanning the reference list of the said article. But equally importantly, a PhD student, even if found, will not be able to boast but a fraction of the publication record in that area compared with a more senior researcher. For reasons of experience, therefore, it is rather unlikely that a PhD student will be found suitable. But could everyone – PhD students, their supervisors, editorial, author(s) – be missing out on a great opportunity here? Yes, I believe so, and here's why: the process of a more senior researcher reviewing a manuscript and involving a student in the lab not only teaches a younger scientist how to perform peer review, but it also helps train the student in the method of research by analyzing someone else's. That must surely be a very useful adjunct to the bench work and learning-by-doing, hence benefiting the supervisor's lab. In terms of workload it could benefit the supervisor and the author(s), because the paper can be divided into parts that the student can investigate whilst the supervisor works on the larger picture, for example: one way or another, it should be possible to share the work and even get the paper reviewed more quickly. A further benefit for the author(s) is that of having “young” eyes look at the paper with respect to organization and presentation, because younger readers more readily assimilate developments in digital publishing and information presentation on the Internet than older researchers. Given that the intellect of a PhD student can certainly be up there with senior researchers, and constructively critical peer review often helps authors enormously, having a PhD student's brain “on the job” can't be a bad thing, if done under supervision. PhD students with enquiring minds are, on the whole, more likely to ask seemingly naïve questions, or probe long-held assumptions, processes that, on occasion, might well reveal something far from trivial. And so finally to the point about experience. Part of this is, in fact, knowledge of the literature in the field in question. And often a PhD student who is close to writing up her/his thesis has at least as good – if not better(!) – knowledge of the field's literature than the grant-proposal-beleaguered supervisor. If not before, that's a wonderful point for a supervisor to invite a PhD student to be involved in a peer review. But students: you have to ask and remind as well! The “involvement” can be anything from “looking over the shoulder”, so to speak, to sharing the work. If training the next generation of researchers to be good peer reviewers early is not reason enough, then I hope I've provided a few more to set us thinking about a very useful, largely untapped, peer review pool. Andrew Moore Editor-in-Chief