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Peer review can be a confusing process at times. Knowing how to find peer reviewers can be even more difficult. To help cut out all the jargon and make it as simple as possible, we have developed the ‘Peer Review Experts’ blog series. We’ll be bringing you top tips on a wide range of peer review subjects, straight from the experts; our very own peer-review team at F1000Research. This week, Jeniffer Jeyakumar, Charlie Vickers, and Yousuf Al-Mousawi, Senior Editorial Assistants at F1000Research, are offering their best advice on how to find peer reviewers.

Articles in F1000Research are thoroughly peer reviewed. Peer review is by invitation only and is open (the names and affiliations of reviewers are published alongside their reports). The peer review process for F1000Research is led by our authors, which means they are responsible for identifying appropriate experts from relevant fields until sufficient peer review reports have been published. We ask our authors to provide reviewer suggestions because we believe that they are best placed to identify the most appropriate expert reviewers, within the appropriate field of research. Additionally, we ask our authors to make sure that their reviewer suggestions are geographically diverse. This means that the suggested reviewers are based in more than just one or two countries, which we refer to as “global reviewers”. This helps to ensure that we gain a global perspective on our articles.

Therefore, given that this process is a bit different from other more traditional peer review methods, we thought it would be helpful to note down a few hints and tips below to help you find suitable peer reviewers for your article:

The F1000Research Reviewer Finding Tool: a good place to start

To assist our authors with finding reviewers, we have developed a Reviewer Finding Tool. Our algorithm analyses key areas from your article and provides a list of reviewer candidates, based on related published studies. You can find the tool on the ‘Suggest Reviewers’ page, which can be accessed via a link next to your submitted or published article in My Research on F1000Research.

The tool can provide a valuable place to start finding suitable reviewers but it’s worth bearing in mind that since this is an automatically generated list of potential reviewers, we advise authors to use their judgment to determine if the suggested reviewers have the appropriate expertise and experience to review the article.  Unfortunately, the F1000Research editorial team is unable to check the tool’s suggestions for suitability prior to submission and so please be aware that they might be rejected if they do not meet our reviewer criteria.

If the tool is not able to produce enough helpful suggestions, it can still act as a guide. Alongside the names of the potential authors is a link to the articles which the tool has pulled through. This is the place to start when checking for the subject suitability of the suggestions. Further to this, there may be other authors on the paper who may be suitable to review the article.

Harness your knowledge

Another great place to look is in the reference list of your article. There are often a high number of articles on a similar subject area to your article, which can be a vast resource of potential reviewers. It is best to use articles that have been cited within the last few years, as these are much more likely to have active authors than a ground-breaking piece of research from the 80s, as the authors are much more likely to have retired by now!

Furthermore, as an expert in your field, it is also likely that you will be aware of collections of other potential reviewers. For example, from large laboratories or institutions that employ researchers in the same field. These labs and institutions often have websites that have plenty of information about their staff members and their specialties. However, as we are only able to invite one reviewer from each institution at a time, it is always best to look at several institutional web pages at any time before sending your suggestions to the editorial team.  

Search online

Google is a great place to start for finding authors or papers related to your subject area. It will often bring up results which may include Google Scholar pages and institutional pages. These results provide a wealth of information and allow you to determine whether an author could be a suitable reviewer.

You may also wish to use an abstracting and indexing database, especially if you work in a small field or it has been unable to provide you with suitable suggestions. This is possible by searching sites such as PubMed, Web of Science, and Scopus (or other subject-specific literature databases) for recent articles using specific keywords. Alternatively, if you publish in the humanities and social sciences (HSS), you may find that Google Scholar will be much more useful for searching relevant literature. Please note that some of these databases are subscription-based services and so may not be available at your institution.

There are also specialized websites to assist with finding potential reviewers. One example of this is JANE. Another is a sub-section of Google Scholar, where it is possible to search for authors by their subject area.

Reviewer credentials

Once suitable papers have been found, it is worth checking the expertise of the authors. For example, if you have written a bioinformatics paper, a bioinformatician or computer scientist is much more likely to have the experience and knowledge required to review the paper, as opposed to the article’s other authors.

There are certain article types where this is especially important, such as Systematic Reviews. It is important to bear in mind when suggesting reviewers that some people may not have experience in conducting a Systematic Review. Therefore, they may not have the specific skills to assess whether the work done was appropriately. It is possible on PubMed to search for Systematic Reviews exclusively. Plus, if a reviewer is a Systematic Review expert, it is often less important for them to be knowledgeable in the subject area of the article. If this is the case, we would then also require a  reviewer who is an expert in the subject area.  

Likewise, if you are a psychologist reviewing a Case Study or Policy Brief, it would be a good idea to look for reviewers who have this experience already. These individuals would be in a better position to provide comments compared to other potentially suitable reviewers.

The affiliations of the authors are also important when checking for their location. Reviewers cannot come from the same institution as the authors of the paper. This applies to all articles published on F1000Research. We also strongly encourage authors to suggest reviewers from around the world where possible, so that a global perspective can be gained for the article, and to ensure that all aspects of the work are reviewed.

Competing interests

When suggesting reviewers, please ensure that you have not collaborated with them recently. However, we do understand that there are occasions where authors have worked on worldwide collaborations, which would rule out several potential reviewers, despite having never met or worked closely with the reviewer. We would then consider this on a case-by-case basis to ensure there are no competing interests.

One effective way of searching for potential collaborations is using Google Scholar, which can search by author names. By searching for the names of the potential reviewer and the lead authors of your article, you will find any articles which the two may have worked on together. You’ll also see other articles that they have both been cited in, so it may require the addition of first initials to narrow this search down.

One thing to note if you have previously published your work on F1000Research is that we are unable to invite reviewers who have reviewed your other articles. This may also be seen as a potential competing interest.

Finding reviewers can be a difficult process, especially if it isn’t something you do very often. We hope this guide has given you some ideas for how to find peer reviewers in your field. However, if you do have any questions, we are always happy to help! You can contact us by emailing research@f1000.com.

Originally published 11/1/2019. Updated on 09/21/21.