Peer review is an essential process used by professional and scientific journals to strengthen the manuscripts submitted for publication. Although there are several types of peer review, many journals such as JPSN, use a blinded process. In this process, the title page and identifiers such as the name of the institutional review board and institution have been removed so the reviewer cannot identify the author. The reviewer names are also blinded and are not given to the author. On submission, the journal editor reviews the manuscript to make sure it aligns with the journal's mission and goals as well as the journal guidelines and style (e.g., APA sixth edition) has been followed. Muir-Cochrane (2013) details "how to get rejected without trying": ignore the journal guidelines including format, length, and referencing style; not proofreading the manuscript and translating into proper English; and using poor grammar.
Manuscripts that do not meet the criteria will be immediately returned to the author. Otherwise, it will be assigned to at least two reviewers. Reviewers are volunteers who are registered into the Editorial Manager (EM) system (each publishing company has their own system); they are content experts registered with key words such as trauma or wound care and will be matched with manuscript key words. When reviewers are assigned, they should make sure they have the time to spend reviewing in addition to ensuring that there is no conflict of interest with the manuscript. It is okay to say you are currently unavailable or, for example, that you are only available to review two manuscripts per year. You will need to "accept or decline" within several days or the EM system will send reminders followed by rescinding the manuscript. You will also be given a date to have the review completed. If you feel you will need more time, email the Editor up front to ask for an extension or to pass on the review if the Editor needs the manuscript completed sooner. It is better to communicate your needs to the Editor to do the job well than accept every offer and not be able to perform the task appropriately.
The reviewers should completely familiarize themselves with the author guidelines and also reviewer guidelines if they are available from the journal or publisher Web site (JPSN has reviewer tips and guidelinesh posted on the Web) Every reviewer will develop his or her own system of proofreading over time. However, most will say that they first quickly read through the manuscript to determine its relevancy to the journal, author guideline adherence, flow, grammar and spelling, and purpose of the manuscript. For certain types of manuscripts, the author guidelines may require specific guidelines for study types. For example, systematic reviews require the PRISMA Guidelines, and SQUIRE Guidelines should be used for quality improvement studies. The EQUATOR Network is an excellent source of reporting guidelines for the main study types. The reviewer should make sure that a guideline is used if appropriate.
As the reviewer does a second read through the manuscript, he or she should be checking the accuracy of content and references. References should be primary references whenever possible and not be greater than 5 years unless a landmark contribution. The reviewer needs to carefully check every reference to make sure it was cited properly and was interpreted appropriately. Most EM systems have a plagiarism scoring engine to identify problems, which is checked by the Editor. If the manuscript has a number of spelling, grammar, and APA problems, the reviewer should make an overall general comment but does not need to fix every one of them. They can ask the author to proofread it again. In addition, after the manuscript goes into production, it will be checked by a copyeditor to catch any last errors. The reviewer should always start and end with positive comments. Writing is a time-consuming, difficult, and learned skill; reviewers should take the time to give specific, constructive, nonoffensive suggestions to the authors. Authors take reviews very personally and often lose steam to make the required changes if disheartened by the review. We do not want to lose our nurse authors. A short narrative can be written, but the bulk of the comments/suggestions should be in a chart or list form so that the author can respond back to the suggestions. Harding's (2010, p. 336) example on how to phrase feedback in peer reviews for nurse authors does a nice job showing a complete review sample (link to Harding article that is posted on the JPSN Web site). When the revised manuscript is resubmitted, it will most likely be returned to the reviewer to check to make sure all of their suggestions were addressed.
The reviewer is an integral part of the publication process, and the job should not be taken lightly. Fantastic reviewers are revered by the Editorial team. Reviewing is an important way to use your editing skills and content knowledge perspective, which will assist in providing the author with a great sense of accomplishment and personal reward as well as help disseminate important findings to the nursing literature.
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