How to write an effective referee report

Abstract

Most scientists learn how to review papers by being thrown into the deep end of the pool: here's a paper, write a review.Perhaps this is not the best way to keep an enterprise afloat.But what should be included in a review?What should the tone of a review be?Here I want to outline the specifics of what we at the JCI are looking for in a referee report.For the editorial process to be successful, a few things are paramount: a well-written and novel manuscript, an informed and unbiased editor, and constructive comments from peer reviewers.We've already published pieces on how to write a scientific masterpiece (1) and what to expect from the editors (2, 3), but so far, we haven't paid as much attention to another important group: referees.In addition to the myriad tips listed by the Editor in Chief (4), here are a few other things to keep in mind. What is the point of a review?Peer review should help to improve a paper that is already scientifically sound.The editors have a rule that if a manuscript is sent for external review, then we feel that it could ultimately, if appropriately revised, appear in the journal.The key thing we are looking for is comment on whether the experiments are well designed, executed, and controlled and can justify the conclusions drawn.Remember that there is a distinction between reviewing the paper and rewriting it for the authors.In other words, remember that this is the author's paper. Structure and function of a good reviewWe use a form that requires referees to separate their comments into two fields: confidential comments to the editors and comments to be transmitted to the authors.Feel free to speak plainly and passionately, if you wish, in the confidential comments field (see Insightful confidential comments to editors).Your comments need not recapitulate exactly what you have written for the authors.It is in the confidential comments field that you should place your views on whether the manuscript is appropriate for the JCI; statements of this nature should not be transmitted to authors.This is because it is not fair to the authors or to the editors to give conflicting feedback, for example, if you tell the authors that their paper should be acceptable to the JCI and use language like "potentially interesting and important" but then disparage the conclusions in the confidential comments.Summarize the science.In the comments for authors, start with a few sentences of introduction that outline what you think was the authors' hypothesis, their main results, and the conclusions drawn.This is important because it shows us what you think were the major advances as opposed to what the authors might argue are the major conclusions.Be specific about what you think the study adds or changes in terms of understanding the pathway or disease under investigation and/or where this leaves us in terms of a conceptual advance.This allows the editors and authors to determine how an expert in the field viewed the paper.This first paragraph need not be long and is best finished with whether the conclusions are supported by the data and whether major or minor changes are required.An exemplary introductory paragraph taken

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 11 citations exist upstream.

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.