5 THINGS PEER REVIEWERS DON’T DO

Category: Education

Peer review plays a significant role in academia; it is often used to assess an academic paper, and decided its suitability for being published. Few question the importance of the peer review process and many agree that the present system has its own shortcomings. Nevertheless, through this article, we focus on some real limitations of the peer review process. 5 Things peer reviewers don’t do Statistical Check Remember, peer reviewers are your peers, and not all of them are not necessarily statistical experts to recalculate all statistics listed in your research paper. They don’t rerun statistical calculations during research paper editing. Nevertheless, they detect basic statistical errors and obvious mistakes that attract their attention. Checking raw statistical data Checking raw statistical data is time-consuming because it is an extremely slow process. Therefore, peer reviewers usually do not check the raw data. If the original data represented need visible statistical corrections the peer reviewers add a comment asking the author to verify the data with its source. Repeating experiments It is unrealistic to expect/ask peer reviewers to perform complete experiment and record the results for checking. They only examine the necessities for conducting an experiment is listed so that the experiment can be reproduced. Performing an actual experiment is beyond the scope of peers during research paper editing. Validating Author Details Reviewers expect identities of the Authors to be genuine because cross-checking each author, in reality, is not possible. Moreover, peers are not appointed to invest time in checking Author credibility and identities. Verify conflict of interest In academia, it is vital to declare a potential conflict of interest for each manuscript when assessing research work validity. However, in the actual world, it is impossible to check the validity of research declaration made by authors. Reviewers simply scan the declaration to check for any biased opinions and highlight if any. Peer reviewers in reality look for strengthening your manuscript. They highlight major drawbacks, errors and flaws found prior to publication in order to aid you publish flawless and factual research work that can be put to use in the present life by others. Hopefully, the future peer review systems overcome these shortcomings thus making new models more efficient for use.