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Peer review: how to do it, and how to survive it
- 1. Peer Review How to do it, and how to survive it Joshua Knowles j.knowles@cs.bham.ac.uk
- 2. Reproduced without permission (original source unknown).
- 3. Contents Purpose Motivation for you to get involved Mechanics – how to do it Surviving it
- 4. Purpose of Peer Review In general: Provide a filter to disseminate interesting results, and suppress insignificant, unoriginal or incorrect results Categorize papers, enabling us all to find papers of interest in our own topic area For journals: To provide feedback to authors, allowing them to improve their manuscript before publication (with further rounds of peer review if necessary) For conferences: To judge whether the paper is a potential ‘best paper’, a full talk, a shorter talk, a poster, or needs further revision before it can be accepted (or rejected)
- 5. Purpose of Peer Review (Not!) Image Source: https://s-media-cache- ak0.pinimg.com/originals/ac/4d/66/ac4d 66558e4bd6225a4bb6188ecaf586.jpg
- 6. Alternatives to Peer Review A growing minority regard peer review as unnecessary, too random, too biased, and unwieldy. An alternative is to filter out only unscientific work (e.g., creationist papers), and leave quality and scope judgments to readers. The internet facilitates finding interesting papers — we don’t need journals. The journal PLoS ONE is a prime example of a new breed that judges only technical correctness, not significance*. It has a very high readership, and reviewing is fast (but you have to pay because it is open access, i.e., readers don’t pay).
- 7. Who are reviews written for? The editors of the journal — to help them make an accept/reject decision The author(s) Other reviewers, sometimes. In the case of submission of a revised paper, it is possible to see what the other reviewers said last time The future readers of the paper. By reviewing, you are helping to make papers more readable and contributing to overall quality. Image Source: http://rainmaker.fm/wp- content/uploads/2015/03/editor-001-mp3- image-200x200.png
- 8. What the Editor wants to see in a Review She doesn’t want to read the paper (she has too many to oversee) She doesn’t want to take your word for it entirely Conclusion: she wants your opinion with evidence, so that she can make an informed decision. Image source: http://media.npr.org/assets/img/2014/10 /14/joanna-coles-corbis- 5c951a864e530092ea82bf4ba6a449e0085 89356-s900-c85.jpg
- 9. What the Editor likes to see in a Review It is worth repeating a bit of what is in the abstract in your own words. For example: This paper is about making spiking neural net equations simpler. This is important to help with efforts to simulate whole brains. Criticisms should contain evidence as much as possible. E.g., The paper is technically incorrect page X, equation X.2 : the rhs is missing the coefficient 1/pi page Y, the correct term for "loop-backness" is "recurrent"
- 10. What the Authors like to see This is largely the same as for the editor. They want to see that the reviewer read and tried to understand the paper, hence they need to see a bit of overview. They want to know why the paper is being criticised, along with concrete examples. We would like to be told the paper is really great, but even then it is nice to know why the reviewer thinks so, precisely. Image: The Concrete Café-'Egg, Bacon, Hash Browns: Fried on Sidewalk.' - New Yorker Cartoon By: Roz Chast
- 11. Important matters If you are a reviewer, you are probably not paid. You are doing the review out of service to your field. Hence, there is a limit to how long you should spend reviewing. This obviously depends upon the importance of the paper, how technically demanding it is, and what stage it is at, though. I try to gauge how long the review should take, and then set that as a time limit. I rarely meet my own time limit, but the effort helps. Remember: you do not have to write the paper for the authors!
- 13. Why YOU should review (now!) Refereeing papers is something every PhD student should be doing, as soon as they get the chance. It really helps you see the other side of the coin. In other words, you get to see how to write your papers better as you know what it is like to referee them! It makes you feel part of the scientific community, and hopefully does not give you a power complex or a platform for revenge - but I am straying back into ethics again! http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-b3AxLugH7Oo/U
- 14. Keep taste out of it, and be balanced While reviewers should assess significance — a ‘judgment call’ — I try to avoid basing my review on whether or not I like the paper: I try to be impartial. In other words, I think about whether some other person in my field would like it, or find it important. Image from http://www.pralinesownmade.com/blog/the-million-dollar-taste-tester/
- 15. Keep taste out of it, and be balanced Another thing: avoid making your review one-sided. If the writing, grammar and experiments stink, it is hard to say something positive about the idea. But you should do so, if the idea is good. (I am not in favour of making, say, exactly three positive and three negative points, however: this just makes it harder for editors to assess overall quality and significance, and may encourage disingenuous comments).
- 16. The common review comments I dish out to authors The purpose of the paper is not clear. Example . . . do you mean . . . ? The related work section is not structured. It should not be written in the form: A did this, B did that, C did the other. It should follow a form that explains the relationships between ideas and developments in the field, and references should be there to support this. The related work section is ungenerous. Please be clearer that you follow X or build on Y. The conclusion is not justified by the results because... You need to show ... Note: I do make positive comments, but rather rarely. It is mostly about improving the paper.
- 17. An exemplar review form Here is a review form I like. It is edited (without permission) from the form used by the journal Evolutionary Computation. http://www.cs.bham.ac.uk/~jdk/review-form.xml It prompts for judgments on sensible review criteria, without dictating the structure too much. Here are some of the things it, and other review forms, ask you to comment on ...
- 18. Typical criteria for judgments Story / purpose Did the author communicate the idea clearly? Significance This is a judgment; you should justify your view briefly Originality Remember, originality and significance have to go together! Technical correctness Did the authors use terminology of the field correctly? Delivery Did the authors deliver on their claim? Replicability Are experimental methods detailed enough to be replicated? Experiments and Statistics Were these done correctly? Did they really establish the conclusions drawn?
- 19. Significance – a most significant thing! Part of significance is evidence of generality. In other words, did the authors say I’ve discovered light everywhere in the universe has maximum speed c Or did they say: In my little corner of the lab, if it is a Tuesday and I come in early, sometimes the light casts a shadow of strange shape on my desk. It looks like a giraffe ? I would suggest the former is what we aspire to do, and the latter is not general enough to be of interest. Mostly, published work should be somewhere closer to the first one, hopefully.
- 20. Significance and Originality (at the same time) A famous (nasty) comment goes like this: I find your thesis both significant and original. Sadly, the part which is significant is not original, And the part which is original is not significant!
- 21. Don’t be angry, don’t be mean . . . The author is probably not trying to be annoying, so don’t get annoyed. Try not to be too clever either. Remember, Ethics? Try to put yourself in the author’s shoes and think how you would feel receiving your review Image from http://goldengirlfinance.com/inspiration/?post_id=57
- 22. A True Story about Blind Review Most reviews are blind: the reviewer is anonymous. Some are even double-blind: neither reviewers nor authors are revealed. Once, an academic told me he had reviewed half a dozen papers for a conference and the review system failed and sent his name to all the authors, along with his review. He said: “It made for an interesting conference, but I was not embarrassed because I never say anything in review that I wouldn’t be ok to say to the person’s face.” Remember this, in case it ever happens to you!
- 26. Pretend like you have NO emotions! Image from http://memory-beta.wikia.com/wiki/Data
- 27. Two personal experiences Victorious... Eventually! A journal paper was written and rejected a number of times. We published it as a technical report and it had 400 citations in the first couple of years... Na na, na na nah! Just painful and unfair Worked for four years with Jodrell Bank Observatory. Developed techniques that actually found new Pulsars. Work published in MNRAS. Grant associated with further work REJECTED Image soure: http://www.daviddarling.info/images/LovellTelescope2.jpg
- 28. Amusing, consoling? Warning: the following video contains strong language. It may also seem to trivialise historical events concerning the Third Reich. Please do not watch it if this is likely to offend you. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-VRBWLpYCPY The above is perhaps of dubious educational value. However, I include it because when work has been rejected I have found it useful and consoling to watch, ... for the PhD student who caused the failure ;-)
- 29. The Response Letter The response to a rejection can be VERY important. Here is are some links about how to write this. http://clinchem.aaccjnls.org/content/57/4/551 https://thinkscience.co.jp/en/articles/2016-06- WritingResponseLetters.html http://www.nature.com/news/scientists-offer-advice-on- how-best-to-respond-to-reviewers-1.17640
- 30. Good Luck And good reviewing! Copyright Note: All images in this set have been used without permission unless stated, under the terms of “fair use”.