As I was pondering on which topic to write about in this issue’s note from the Editor-in-Chief, I received an unexpected but a pleasantly surprising e-mail. The e-mail was sent by an author whose paper was considered for publication in our Journal and was eventually declined. In a typical scenario like this, if I see an e-mail from the author of the paper which was just declined, I dread opening that e-mail; thinking that the author will likely question the decision, perhaps point out perceived inconsistencies in the reviews, and occasionally blame the reviewers (and editors alike) for being biased and unfair. However, to my surprise, the author of the abovementioned e-mail simply thanked the editorial team and the reviewers for their constructive comments, adding that while they are disappointed in the outcome, they understand the feedback and will carefully consider that feedback to improve their research and writing in the future. As great and heart-warming these were, what really made me think was the author’s statement indicating that thanks to the feedback, they will be able to better contribute to the field with a more robust paper in the future. To me, this is the ultimate goal of the peer-review process in research. We all write papers to disseminate our research with that ultimate goal: To contribute to the body of knowledge in our field. I cannot think of a better way than the peer-review process to make that happen. After all, our research can only contribute to the field if it can be understood by our peers and more importantly if it inspires our peers for their own future work. Generally speaking, especially in a blinded peer-review process, those peers do not have any self interest in our success or failure as individual researchers; rather, they care about the field itself.
I also want to use this as an opportunity to describe the peer-review process in our Journal, as the process varies significantly between different journals. In our blinded peer-review process, the peer reviewers do not know who the authors are (and vice-versa). Every paper that gets submitted first goes through a cursory desk review by our Managing Editor to make sure it fits the scope of our Journal and it has the potential for publication. The papers meeting these criteria then move to what we call the “gatekeeper review.” At this stage, the paper gets to be thoroughly reviewed by one of our Associate Editors. This review may have either of the following two outcomes: “1) This paper should not be considered for further review” or “2) This paper can move to the full peer-review.” Both outcomes are also accompanied by significant constructive feedback to the authors. The purpose of the “gatekeeper review” is to allow only those papers which, in the opinion of our Associate Editors, have a large potential to get published, provided that the authors do, indeed, incorporate the constructive feedback that would be received as a result of the full peer-review. This way, we are aiming to use the time of our limited reviewer pool more efficiently and get them to produce meaningful and timely reviews. The papers moving to the full peer-review will be reviewed by one of our editorial board members and one general reviewer. This entire process results in three full reviews for papers that got past the “gatekeeper review,” all of which will inform the decision on that paper. All of this process has the ultimate goal I mentioned above and correctly identified by the author of the declined paper who sent me the abovementioned e-mail: To ensure that the papers published in our Journal contribute to the body of knowledge in our field.
As is generally acknowledged, peer review process, at times, may be imperfect. Notwithstanding this, our committed editorial team does everything they can to ensure the integrity and timeliness of the process I described above. What we should never forget is this is all a volunteer effort by our community for our community. For that, I would like to thank all the authors for being willing to share their research to contribute to our field and inspire us, and reviewers as well as our editorial team for providing their expertise and time to ensure that our Journal showcases those contributions.