peer review – The Early Career Voice

In defense of peer review

May 1, 2020May 1, 2020 Allison Webel, PhD

The generation of knowledge, through rigorous, established systematic methods has informed much of our progress in the past few centuries. Science guides all aspects of healthcare today including how we develop the new medications, therapeutic procedures, and non-pharmacological interventions that have improved the quality and duration of human life. Many of the crucial gates in the scientific journey- funding, ethical approval, and dissemination- are guarded by the process of peer review; a process that is increasing under attack in our current hyper-reactive, digital, media cycle.

Peer review is the critical appraisal of a scientific work by those who have requisite knowledge to evaluate one or more aspects of the work. It is a panel of experts in the related field who understand the importance and novelty of the questions under consideration and the rigor and trustworthiness of the methods proposed or employed to answer that question.

Peer review takes time. Time to find agreeable reviewers with the right expertise, time to review and think about the science, and time to determine how to weigh those critiques against the community’s need for information. From the early days of the novel coronavirus pandemic, this balance of time needed for peer review and unquenchable public thirst for rigorous information has been dominating the conversations at leading medical and scientific journals around the world. To better understand how these decisions are made and what we as clinicians, scientists, and health care consumers need to consider when reading and sharing emerging science, I spoke with Dr. Joseph Hill, the Editor in Chief of Circulation one of 12 AHA Journals.

Even though peer review is an established practice, it is important to start by questioning why we should even do it. Unquestionably, the value of thoughtful peer review is that it enhances the quality of the science. “We [the AHA journals)\] handle approximately 20,000 manuscripts a year and with extraordinarily rare exceptions, the paper always gets better with peer review”.

Having now published many of my own scientific manuscripts, I know the pain of peer review well. “They” missed that detail on line 176. “They” clearly lack the expertise to evaluate my work. “They” kept this manuscript for 8 months before sending their disposition! However, I also know that some of the best revisions to my papers have come from generous peer reviewers. Reviewers who volunteered to spend their time reading my papers and think deeply about my findings in the context of larger literature. While painful, the constant assessment and evaluation of our science is critical to improving the quality and impact of our work.

Prior to the coronavirus outbreak, up to 10 experts, including peer reviewers, statisticians, and editors, would review a manuscript for Circulation. But the need for up-to-date information about the epidemiology, pathophysiology, and treatment of COVID-19 challenged Circulation’s editorial team to move fast. While recognizing that it’s “hard to do good science in a war zone”, the quality of published science cannot be compromised in times of crisis. Dr. Hill continues, “We are walking a fine line between trying to get the information out as quickly as possible but we recognize that [in clinical science] we could make it worse and could do harm. So we have to maintain our high standards but function at a high velocity.”

High velocity seems an understatement. After an initial call for high-quality COVID-19 related papers, the editorial team has done over 300 fast track reviews, contributed to a curated coronavirus and cardiovascular disease collection, and conducted 17 interviews with experts working on the front line around the world. All in the past month. This work is exhausting but done with great energy by a team inspired to advance “cardiovascular science for the good of humanity, especially during these times of urgent challenge, anxiety, and forthright resolve.”

Peer review is the best process we have for evaluating science; but peer review is done by peers- busy, human, distractible peers- who will make mistakes. This is why many reputable journals require an editorial screen and at least two peer reviews before it can make a decision on a manuscript. Scientific volunteers do this work. Which brings us to what you, as an early career professional can do. Peer review relies on us—all of us—to sign up to review, accept the invitation to review, and spend the time carefully doing the review. You may wonder if you have the expertise to peer review for Circulation or another AHA Journal; you likely do and you should. Dr. Hill remarked that “some of the best reviews I’ve seen are from early-career scientists”. If you are interested in helping to contribute to peer review and the sharing of good cardiovascular science, considering signing up to be a journal reviewer in your AHA Science Volunteer Form or emailing Dr. Hill your interest in reviewing for Circulation.

“The views, opinions and positions expressed within this blog are those of the author(s) alone and do not represent those of the American Heart Association. The accuracy, completeness and validity of any statements made within this article are not guaranteed. We accept no liability for any errors, omissions or representations. The copyright of this content belongs to the author and any liability with regards to infringement of intellectual property rights remains with them. The Early Career Voice blog is not intended to provide medical advice or treatment. Only your healthcare provider can provide that. The American Heart Association recommends that you consult your healthcare provider regarding your personal health matters. If you think you are having a heart attack, stroke or another emergency, please call 911 immediately.”

Writing is Hard— And Here’s Why You Should Do it

March 2, 2020March 4, 2020 Elizabeth Knight, PhD, DNP

If you are in academia, you are likely familiar with the “publish or perish” mantra. Publishing in peer-reviewed journals is absolutely valuable, both for researchers and for clinicians. It’s a robust way to develop and share knowledge. It can help you get promoted. It can raise your profile in your field. But for people with competing demands (teaching, clinical practice, the rest of your life), it’s not always accessible.

Don’t worry— there are other reasons to write and other ways to publish. In navigating what kind of writing and publishing is valuable, it’s crucial to understand your goals. One size does not fit all. The best approach for you depends on your professional trajectory. If you have an academic appointment and you are pursuing tenure and promotion, then yes, data-based and peer-reviewed publications are your priority. But perhaps your role is different, or broader— maybe you see yourself as a public educator or advocate, a clinical expert, or a mentor. Writing is hugely valuable in these roles as well, but it doesn’t necessarily look the same. Or, to put it in other terms, writing is like medication admiration. You need to check the “5 rights”: What’s the right drug (topic), dose (length), route (venue), time (frequency), and patient (author)?

If you are not (or not solely) pursuing an academic career in the sciences, think outside the box, and consider:

Writing about science and medicine for a popular audience— think of influential physician and nurse authors like Theresa Brown, Atul Gawande, Lisa Sanders, or Jerome Groopman.
Write for a clinical audience— in my field, Journal for Nurse Practitioners or American Family Physician, for example, publish articles on clinical topics.
Writing creatively, in health humanities publications (or some medical journals publish poetry on occasion). Or write to nourish your life outside of science and medicine (the poet William Carlos Williams was a physician).
Writing for a blog. Blogging is a great way to share ideas and influence rapidly and less formally.
Writing as a personal practice. Many highly successful people practice some form of journaling as a way of working out ideas and thoughts that later serve as the basis of important work. A writing routine– even if it’s ten minutes a day– can be a catalyst for creative and productive work.

If you want to write more, no matter what the content and context, consider:

Never “just” give a talk— can it also be a paper? A poster? Explore it fully, and expand the potential audience for your work by considering different venues and angles. Get more mileage from each project you take on.
Say yes. . . and say no. Take on projects and accept invitations that allow you to develop an idea— but only ones that align with your goals and interests. Don’t say yes if you truly don’t have the bandwidth, or if the offer doesn’t advance your progress in some way. But DO say yes to things that are outside of your comfort zone. You might expand your expertise and influence in valuable ways.
Join (or start) writing groups: accountability & feedback are invaluable. Colleagues who will read your work and give you mock reviews are precious. Develop these relationships early in your career and they will serve you well.
Look at author guidelines for publications you read (whether these are high-impact journals or tiny blogs). Could you make a contribution?
Think about your unique skills and experiences. What is it that you have that no one else does? What do you have to say that you haven’t heard said before? You have a unique voice and you should use it. I have heard many writers say they created work they wanted to read but couldn’t find. The novelist Barbara Kingsolver says, “don’t try to figure out what other people want to hear from you; figure out what you have to say.”This is great advice to produce writing with a strong point of view.

How will you include more writing in your professional life?

Support Starts at Self

February 7, 2020February 12, 2020 Mo Al-Khalaf, PhD

Last month I wrote about how trainees and early career professionals should approach the New Year with a focus on mentorship (from multiple sources when possible!) as a priority to advance their careers. The input we can accumulate from individuals that have the ability to “teach us the ropes”, and expose us to some new tool or perspective to enhance our professional growth and advancement, is essential. This input carries value that fuels the propagation and elevation of society upward and forward. Today I want to discuss what I envision to be the “other side of the coin” to mentorship, the way in which an individual can advance by an “output” effort, in complement to the “input” that mentors provide. Namely what I’m referring to is advocacy. Trainees and early career professionals tend to under-appreciate 2 main truths with regards to advocacy efforts:

1- We are prone, primed and sometimes advised to shy away from advocating for our own causes.

2- We underestimate our ability to advocate and support others within our professional communities.

I’ll start with the case for self-advocacy. It can be hard to dissociate the idea of being self-advocating from being self-absorbed, and that is the root cause for why most well-meaning, humble folks avoid the issue altogether. Seeming selfish or self-centered is of course a bad trait, a noxious attitude that most trainees and early career professionals want to avoid at all cost. Selfishness will lead to career derailment and loss of support from other members in the community. But self-advocacy on the other hand, stems from hard work, a desire for just outcomes, as well as confidence and pride in one’s workmanship and abilities. To advocate for yourself, you must first believe and prove that what you’re advocating for is a just and worthwhile cause.

When there is evidence to support the self-promotional effort, individuals can and should be empowered to advocate for themselves. A quick and easy framework to approach self-advocacy could flow like this:

The first step towards justified self-advocacy is identifying and analyzing the reasons why one should or should not pursue the cause. This can sometimes be difficult, we might not be the best judges of our own efforts, sometimes it helps to have “peer-reviewers” to help us assess the need for advocacy or not. Family, friends, partners, colleagues, and specialized professionals (referees, counselors, etc), are all individuals that could supply viewpoints that help us understand and decide on whether self-advocacy is warranted at present, or if there still is some distance to cross before we get to that point.

Once justified, championing your own causes has become in fact necessary in a world where competition is present, and alternatives are available, at every stage in a career, most evidently in the early career segment of professions. This necessity also brings nowadays a level of expectation from decisions makers, who may see and value self-advocacy efforts as positive traits in individuals seeking professional advancement. This is the clearest reason why one should acquire and optimize the skills needed to become a just self-champion. Of major importance in this discussion is to note that the way in which one is doing what’s needed to advance, is doing so in a manner leading to an overall benefit, and no harm to anyone else (being a champion for one self can also equal being a champion “for the greater good”).

The second point mentioned above, specifically referring to advocating and supporting others within the shared professional community, also warrants a closer look. A strong and advancing community can promote growth for everyone within it, creating momentum and a sense of altruistic advocacy that is much easier to root for and accept without any hesitation or fear of negative feedback. When professionals in a shared community see the advancement of peers as a strength and growth for the whole group, a collective effort to support and promote one another is created, and a positive feedback loop is fueled.

This is significantly more important when the community can have individuals that face some deliberate, or blind forces, that work against their growth and advancement (such as minorities, persons with disabilities, sex and gender systematic biases, and other forces that do exist in many ways). Whenever there exists a gatekeeper with unjust (knowing or blind) motivation that hinders the advancements within a professional community, it is strongly desirable (and necessary) for a whole group effort to champion and advocate for the fair advancement of the affected individuals within this community. Everyone would gain at the end. A strong community would be built and a momentum for “paying it forward” will start.

As mentioned initially in this post, early career professionals have the unique space to be very highly invested in optimizing the “input” provided to them (mentorship), and the “output” they require (advocacy, both self and community oriented). As we progress in our personal and professional journeys, we must aim to maximize the ways in which mentorship and advocacy can help us achieve the goals we aim to accomplish, both for our own benefits, and the benefits of the communities that we are a part of.

Peer Review Vs ‘Poor’ Review – Can a Systematic Plan Ensure Quality?

August 13, 2019August 13, 2019 Saurav Chatterjee, MD

I was feeling a little disgruntled after in spite of two rounds of reviews, a reputable journal turned down a recent research effort of mine. I couldn’t help but disagree with many of their reviewers’ comments (I believe is a common sentiment among authors)– especially when some of them appeared to be very superficial and abstract. However, having reviewed for quite a few of the prominent and “high impact” cardiology journals myself, it eventually made me pause and think if I had been guilty of the same on occasion in the past. That led me to look up best practices for peer reviewing a manuscript, specifically for a cardiology journal. However, I did not have any significant success on locating such “guidelines.”

Peer review is largely considered to be a noble responsibility of a researcher, and considered an imperative skill for junior investigators. I tried to come up with some semblance of a protocol for myself to save time in future peer review endeavors.

First and foremost, comes the decision to actually accept the peer review. In this day of mushrooming journals and inconsistent quality of manuscripts submitted even to the best of them, the decision to volunteer for a peer review or to decline respectfully is of paramount importance. I personally would decline a review if either the subject matter is not of significant interest to me, or there is significant strain on time for the period allocated for the review by the journal. Of interest in the process of this decision to me also is the evaluation of potential conflicts of interest either declared or undisclosed by the authors. Such conflicts may directly arise from financial relationships of the author(s) to the subject matter of the manuscript – and often times from familiarity of the author with a ‘nominated’ peer reviewer as a professional colleague and/or a friend. Once I decide to review, the first piece of the manuscript that comes across is likely to be the abstract. Abstracts often are a window into the body of the manuscript – and merits close scrutiny. After all, most readers will likely read the abstract first as well. Needless to say that a quality manuscript should be able to invoke interest as well as provide evidence of scientific rigor even within the constraints of the word counts of the abstract. Simultaneously novelty of the investigation should well be portrayed through their abstract.

Next would come the introduction – this is supposed to lay the groundwork for the research details that follow subsequently in the script. However based on my own anecdotal experience, this is one of the least scrutinized segments for a peer reviewer in a rush. However, it may help to convey the logic as well as indicate prior work in the same area as the paper under consideration. That may even be unfamiliar to a seasoned peer review of the topic and may well be an educational treatise.

Then follows the methods section. Some degree of training and even mentoring can significantly help with the review of this section in my opinion. Journals should consider providing training in the various aspects of evaluating the methods section prior to enlisting a peer reviewer. Often times the journals do have statisticians/statistical consultants on their team/editorial board – however, imparting specific training for a volunteer peer reviewer who is considered an expert in a specific area of interest can potentially identify fatal conceptual errors which might otherwise be missed. For my purposes as a junior outcomes researcher without significant statistical training or expertise, I would recommend a statistician to review any part of a analysis plan that does not appear congruent.

Next for evaluation is the heart and soul – the results section of a manuscript. Of particular importance at this stage is to consider discarding/editing any redundancy – in the form of text, and/or figures and/or tables. Of great help to authors in improving a manuscript may stem from a reviewer’s suggestion of replacing any or all forms of the texts in the results with appropriate figures, and or tables with modifications of existing ones. More figures and tables may improve the readability of the manuscript as well.

Then comes the discussion section and it is here that the reviewer should decide if there is a thorough and balanced discussion of the results as reported in the previous section. Evaluation of references and adherence to the journal’s formatting criteria may have interest. Throughout the review process, help from a software to check spellings and grammar are of importance – may convey to the reviewer the lack of care and attention to details from the authors if there are too many.

Finally, enumerating ‘major’ vs ‘minor’ deficits may help overall evaluation. At the end of the peer review, there is the significant task of recommending a decision in the form of acceptance or revisions or rejection out right. In most instances, the authors have dedicated significant effort and time – and deserve a fair and thorough evaluation leading to the decision.

The rewards for a detailed peer review are often a thank you note from the journal/editors, and more recently, CME credits have been a welcome addition. Some journals also list the peer reviewers in special issue. One idea that has been hotly debated for some significant time is the thought of having financial remuneration for peer review work – the idea being that reviewers would work as paid consultants to a journal. I don’t know how that may impact the quality of the process, but it may attract more interest upfront.

What are your thoughts?