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As part of my internship at Sense about Science, I recently had the opportunity to take part in one of their workshops, ‘Peer review: the nuts and bolts’. Sense about Science, an independent campaigning charity that challenges the misrepresentation of science and evidence in public life, runs these workshops for early career researchers to find out about peer review, debate challenges to the system and discuss the role of peer review for scientists and the public.

Peer review is essential for the integrity of science and despite it being a flawed process, is the best solution to maintain quality of publications.

The workshop, held in London at Informa publishing’s head office, started with some group work to get the discussion going and was then followed by a great panel discussion on the process of peer review in journal publishing. The panel members consisted of Dr Sabina Alam, editorial director for F1000 Platforms, Dr Amarachukwu Anyogu, lecturer at the University of Westminster, and Dr Bahar Mehmani, reviewer experience lead at Elsevier.

The panel gave a great insight into how the peer review process works, from a publisher and reviewer’s point of view, why and how early career researchers should get involved, and the new direction peer review is taking to try to avoid bias.

After some further group work on the future of peer review, Joanne Thomas from Sense about Science gave a summary of how peer review can help the public understand scientific claims and how Sense about Science aims to raise awareness of peer review, with publications like I don’t know what to believe, I’ve got nothing to lose by trying it, and for early career researchers Peer review: the nuts and bolts (PDF).

As a second year PhD student, I haven’t had much experience with the peer review process and before attending this workshop I felt quite removed from the whole process. However, the workshop was very enlightening and helped me to understand the importance of the peer review process and the importance of getting involved.

Publishers are currently working on alternatives, to be more open and transparent to avoid bias and keeping the debate going is a great way to improve peer review.

The main take away messages for me were that peer review is essential for the integrity of science and despite it being a flawed process, is the best solution to maintain quality of publications. Early career researchers can feel pressured into ‘cherry-picking’ their results for publications, and I previously felt impact factors from publishers were to blame, but hearing from their perspective made me realise that a lot of the problem lies more with the metrics.

Publishers are currently working on alternatives, to be more open and transparent to avoid bias and keeping the debate going is a great way to improve peer review. By getting involved, early career researchers can help shape the future, as well as understand a reviewer’s perspective and develop their own professional skills.