Peer review is an important component of academic research and publishing, but it can feel like an opaque process, especially for those not directly involved. I am very fortunate to have been able to participate in the peer review of multiple papers, despite being very early in my career, through support from my supervisors and a mentoring program run by Sense about Science with Nature Communications. Here are some of the things I have learned.

What is peer review?

At its best, peer review allows high research standards to be upheld and enables reviewers to engage with and constructively improve the work they are reviewing. The peer review process occurs after authors have submitted their paper to a journal, but before publication (note that preprints posted on arRxiv’s e.g., bioRxiv are not yet peer reviewed). The general process between submission and acceptance follows the path shown in Figure 1.

Reviewers are typically researchers who work in a field closely related to the subject matter of the submitted paper and are often considered experts of this field.

After receiving a paper, the reviewers critically assess various aspects e.g.,:

• Are the claims the authors are making fully supported by their results?
• Are the experiments/analyses carried out in a sound manner?
• Would the paper be strengthened by any additional experiments/analyses?
• Have the authors explained their work clearly enough for it to be replicated?
• Where does this paper sit in the broader landscape of published literature in this field?

How can ECRs get involved in peer review and why should they?

If you are an early career researcher (ECR) reading this, you might be wondering how you can get involved with peer review. My top suggestion (based on my own experiences and what I heard at Sense about Science peer review workshops) is to ask your supervisor. It is likely that journal editors contact your supervisor to review papers and that your supervisor may be open to invite you to participate in such a review. In this case, your supervisor should then acknowledge you to the editor/journal when submitting the review and your name could get added to a database of reviewers that the journal has used, potentially enabling the journal to contact you again for review. Additionally, you could also reach out to journals (or editors at journals) directly to express an interest in reviewing. In the Sense about Science peer review workshops, journal editors pointed out that visibility (e.g., through publishing, speaking at conferences or online in the form of e.g., a personal website or LinkedIn) helps editors find you and determine your area of expertise for reviewing. There are some more tips from Springer Nature here.

Why would you want to be involved in peer review?

Peer review is an important way to actively participate in the academic community. Most researchers conduct peer review during their careers and this can be an important way to contribute to the standards & direction of the field you work in. Also, if/when you publish, other academics will review your work.

Additionally, there are a lot of important things you can learn from being a reviewer that will help you with your own research. When reviewing, you engage with journals/editors, allowing you to learn about the submission and editorial processes you will go through as an author. Reviewing papers is also an excellent way to improve your own critical thinking, research planning and writing.

Why is it important for ECRs to be involved in peer review at all?

ECRs will one day become leaders of their fields and as such, the scientific community benefits greatly from their training in evaluating research. Involving ECRs may also result in broader perspectives to be considered, enabling greater fluidity in the direction a field takes. Maintaining the integrity of scientific research is important to every member of the community and therefore researchers from all career stages should be involved in the process.

If you do have the opportunity to peer review, here are some suggestions from my own experiences:

• You should feel confident about the general area of research you are reviewing, but you do not have to be an expert on every component of a paper you review.
• Be honest with the editor (or, if you are writing a joint review, with your supervisor) and let them know if there are any areas you feel you cannot adequately assess or comment on.
• Be polite, professional and constructive in your comments. Write comments that you would want to receive and give explanations for why you made certain suggestions.
• Get involved! It is easy to suffer from imposter syndrome when doing peer review, which can be a time-consuming and challenging process. However, your first reviews don’t need to be perfect and you can learn as you get more experience. Great ways to improve as a reviewer (and researcher) include asking your supervisor or colleagues for advice and, if you have access, reading the reports that the other reviewers submitted.

Future directions of peer review

While peer review is very important in the current academic model, is does have limitations and room for improvement. For example, there have been multiple cases where peer review has failed to identify errors or fraudulent results and papers later get retracted (e.g., this high-profile retraction from The Lancet on treatments for Covid patients, as written about in this Guardian article). As papers become more complex, involving more methods and analyses, it is becoming increasingly challenging for reviewers to be able to address every section of the paper adequately.

It is therefore very important to keep discussing ways that we can improve peer review. Indeed, there are some directions in which peer review appears to be changing, from what I have seen and heard e.g.,:

• Greater involvement of ECRs
• Increased publishing on Rxiv (this has been done for a long time in certain fields, but is increasing in e.g., biomedical sciences) – this allows more members of the scientific community to evaluate papers before they receive the ‘peer reviewed’ stamp of approval
• Greater transparency – it is becoming more common for journals to give reviewers/authors the options to publish reviewer names and reports. I opted into both of these when I conducted my reviews for Nature Communications (you can find my name at the bottom of this paper, although I was the only reviewer who agreed to have my name published in this instance)

There are also some greater structural changes to the peer review and publication processes, which, although they may not be broadly applicable across all research areas, are aiming to improve research reproducibility. One example is registered reports (offered by some journals), where authors submit their planned methods prior to conducting a study. The methods are then peer reviewed and accepted or rejected. If the journal accepts the registered report, they agree to publish the study findings regardless of what they are, as long as the authors follow the planned methodology (with some room for changes, if justified). As a result, papers are accepted on the basis of their methodology rather than results, increasing the publication of negative results and emphasizing study design over flashy results. Registered reports are, however, generally less applicable in exploratory research where it is difficult to plan experiments far into the future.

It is important to keep having discussions about how we can improve peer review, research reproducibility and academic culture – and early career researchers must be involved in these discussions.