Peer review

Patricia Huston, MD, MPH
Associate editor-in-chief

Canadian Medical Association Journal 1996; 154: 439

Peer review -- the evaluation of manuscripts, research proposals or academic achievements by professional peers -- is surrounded by layers of mystery. Many clinicians are not sure what peer review is because it is rarely discussed during their training years, and many think they are not directly affected by it. Yet the progression of clinical and scientific information depends on peer review. The general wisdom is that peer review is a useful quality-control mechanism. Indeed, it is the only one we have.

In the case of medical journals, it is not always obvious which are peer reviewed. Young academics have sometimes missed this distinction and have been rudely awakened when their first academic promotion is turned down because all their articles in non-peer-reviewed journals are discounted. Authors preparing a manuscript for submission are wise to check the instructions for authors to determine whether the journal is peer reviewed. Most serious journals state that they are peer reviewed. If they do not, a quick telephone call to the journal office should reveal the answer.

Peer review has been a main part of all academic activity for many years, yet fundamental questions remain: How effective is peer review? Should it be done anonymously? Are criteria of good peer review specific to a discipline? Can we improve peer review by teaching it? To this end, Dr. Drummond Rennie, deputy editor of the Journal of the American Medical Association, and colleagues are organizing the Third International Congress on Biomedical Peer Review and Global Communications, to be held in Prague in September 1997. This forum, we hope, will disclose new advances in our understanding of the process, so central to the scientific enterprise. We will keep you posted.

| CMAJ February 15, 1996 (vol 154, no 4) |