Peer review is a crucial part of academic research, yet few graduate programs offer formal instruction in how to review a journal manuscript or opportunities to practice the skill.
Recognizing that gap, an increasing number of journal editors are now including graduate students in their review processes. The benefits to students go beyond learning how to be a reviewer, says Rosemarie Sokol-Chang, PhD, managing director at APA journals. "Reviewing actually helps students improve their own writing and reading of articles," Sokol-Chang says. "By participating in the review process, you'll learn what to look for and how to process information more efficiently."
How to find opportunities
The newest way to get peer review experience is to sign up to be a reviewer for the APA/APAGS journal Translational Issues in Psychological Science (TPS), which debuts in March.
The journal offers a "publishing training ground" where students can gain experience as authors, editors and reviewers under the tutelage of a seasoned psychologist guest editor, says TPS editor Mary Beth Kenkel, PhD, who is a dean at the Florida Institute of Technology.
Graduate students and postdoctoral fellows are eligible to be reviewers. Find out more about the journal; also see "Matters to a Degree."
Another way to gain experience in peer review is to ask your mentor about opportunities. "Mentors likely receive many invitations to review," says Sokol-Chang. "If they know of student interest in completing reviews, they might take on additional and relevant reviews that align with those students' interests."
Students can also tap into review opportunities by contacting the journals that they read most often to find out if they mentor students in peer review. "Many journals that have a mentored-reviewer program list it on their websites," says Sokol-Chang. Among those that do are Clinical Practice in Pediatric Psychology® and the Journal of Pediatric Psychology.
Reviewer basics
Once you sign up as a reviewer, what should you look for in the papers that come your way? Yale University psychology professor Alan Kazdin, PhD — who sits on the editorial boards of 18 journals — says reviewers must first be candid about what they know and do not know about a subject.
"Out of fairness to the author, just say no if the topic falls out of the range of what you know well," he says.
If you do feel qualified to do the review, says Kazdin, you should seek to answer these questions about a manuscript:
- Does this paper make an important substantive contribution to this area of research?
- Does the methodology (design and execution) permit one to draw the conclusions the author wishes to make?
- Is the paper well organized and complete in explaining what was done and why and how it was done?
In making any comments about the paper, Kazdin says, be sure your tone is constructive, gracious and positive. Do not make any negative or sarcastic comments, such as, "This person should know better."
And don't expect perfection right away — your skills will improve with practice, says Megan Smith, PhD, an assistant professor at Utah State University, Eastern. She reviewed manuscripts for Applied Cognitive Psychology and helped to start TPS as a grad student.
"At first, reviewing was scary," she says. "Initially, I picked out minor issues, but once I was more seasoned, I started thinking about the bigger picture. I asked questions like, ‘What are the main flaws with this entire thesis?' and ‘What makes this publishable?'"
Alexa Lopez, PhD, who helped craft the proposal for TPS as a member of the APAGS Science Committee, says she considers peer review an academic service that students owe to the field. "We're being good scientists," says Lopez, now an NIH/FDA postdoctoral fellow at Virginia Commonwealth University. "When we spend our careers sending manuscripts out for review, it's important to have developed a foundation that allows us to feel comfortable reviewing others' work."