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In this end-of-year blog Jeniffer and Charlie – our resident peer review experts and Senior Editorial Assistants for F1000Research – take a look back at some of the standout peer review reports for different article types that have been published this year and detail the different elements to these reviews which makes them so comprehensive and, importantly, useful for the author.

One of the things that we are most proud of at F1000Research is our pioneering model of open, transparent post-publication peer review, whereas each peer review report comes in, it is published in full, including the name and affiliation of the reviewer – making it available to authors, readers and other reviewers. We believe that transparency has improved the quality of peer review, offering numerous advantages to not only the authors but to reviewers and society.

Since the launch of our peer review expert’s blog series back in September, we have explored a wide range of topics, including: knowing when to accept a review invitation, why reviewer credit is important, how co-reviewing can help your career and how to find the right reviewers for your paper. We hope you have enjoyed these blogs as much as we enjoyed writing them!

We’ve got lots of exciting new content planned for the new year, but until then, we thought we’d run through some of the peer review reports which stood out to the editorial team this year. So, without further ado, let’s get into the reviews we’ve really enjoyed reading this year.

Physics

This year, after only publishing Life Sciences articles in the past, we expanded our scope and published this article on F1000Research, which is part of the Mathematical, Physical and Computation Sciences collection. To ensure that our peer review standards are continued to be upheld, we used the same set of mandatory peer review questions that we posed in life sciences, as they apply across the disciplines. 

An example of one peer review report we have published in this collection is this very thorough report by Joanna IntHout from Radboud University Medical Center.

Jeniffer says: This is a good example of a report where the reviewer has really taken the time to review the article in its entirety in order to highlight all their points. We have discussed the best way to structure a review before, and we mentioned that separating a report into the different sections of a paper is a great way to hit all the points. That is exactly what Joanna IntHout has done in her report, and because of this, she has provided a really comprehensive and well laid out review. 

Living Systematic Review

As well as expanding our scope into Natural Sciences and beyond, we also launched a new article type – the Living Systematic Review. This is very similar to a systematic review, the difference being the ‘living’ methods section. This section of the article will be updated regularly in order to include new evidence as it is published. With this in mind, two new mandatory questions were included in the peer review report to allow reviewers to focus on this aspect. The two added questions are ‘Is the living method justified?’ and ‘Have the search and update schedule been clearly defined and justified?’ and are now listed above the other mandatory questions normally found on a systematic review article.

Jeniffer says: I’ve chosen this report by Ana B.G. Veiga from Federal University of Health Sciences of Porto Alegre, as she has helpfully suggested several grammatical modifications, as well as some additions to figures to make them self-explanatory. This Approved report alongside a second Approved report has indexed the article! The original reviewers will be invited to re-review once the article has been updated with new evidence. If you’re interested in learning more about the process of re-reviewing, you can check out our recent blog on this subject.

Study Protocol

Charlie says: One of the most comprehensive reviews this year for a study protocol was written by Liz Turner of Duke University. The quality of a peer review report is almost always more important than the length, as highlighted in this case. As Editorial Assistants, we notice that the best peer review reports are those which are clearly laid out and well thought through, allowing any author responses to be clear. We’ve always been keen to stress the use of bullet points, number lists and other ways of formatting for reviewers to communicate their feedback, so much so that Yousuf discusses this in his blog about how to best structure peer review reports.”

We also excitingly published a Stage 1 Registered Report, a relatively new article type for F1000Research, which are divided into two stages. The first stage is a Study Protocol, which is published and reviewed before the research is undertaken. The second stage is the research article, with an identical abstract and introduction, where any alterations made to the method must be highlighted. This is a particularly good way of helping to combat the problems with reproducibility. In terms of peer reviewing this article type, the same reviewers are re-invited to review the final research article and to ensure that the protocol has been closely adhered to. More information can be found by reading our blog about registered reports.

Systematic Review

Charlie says: This peer review report of a Systematic Review really stood out to me. It is an international collaboration, where Jolie Krooks and Milen Minkov decided that the article should be assigned a status of Approved with Reservations. One feature is the extensive use of references, which really adds strength to a review by showing that the reviewers have citable research to back up the claims being made in their report. Using our online report form makes adding references simple, needing only the DOI or PMID.

 As well as this, at F1000Research, we really encourage co-reviewing as we know that for early career researchers, it can be a daunting task. One of the best ways to learn from the experience of others is to collaborate with a colleague who already has some experience of peer review, by reviewing the article together. Also, our open peer review model means that all reviewers can gain credit for their hard work!

Software Tool Article

Jeniffer explains: I thought this report by Bertran Sudre stood out from other reports as the mandatory questions, which are normally found at the end of the report, have been incorporated into the main body of the report to allow the reviewer to explain their answers further. Another important factor that I thought was important is that the reviewer has included their own working example of the software package, which shows that they have thoroughly evaluated the R package.

And finally…

We would like to take this opportunity to thank all our authors and reviewers who have taken the time to publish and review with us in 2019. We look forward to reading even more of your articles and peer review reports and to welcoming new authors and reviewers from around the world in 2020. 

If you’re interested in hearing more from our peer review experts, check out our other blogs in this series.