What is peer review?

Peer review can often seem a bit opaque, with no clear indications of exactly what’s happening to your manuscript between the time when you send it to an editor and when they send you a decision. It can be helpful to have an idea of what’s happening to your submission (and why) while you’re waiting for a response from a journal. So, let’s start by talking about what happens in the peer review process.

Jump straight to:

• The purpose of peer review
• The peer review process

The purpose of peer review

To understand the review process, it’s helpful to have an idea about the purpose first. There are three main reasons that we send manuscripts through the peer review process:

1. To improve the manuscript: the first and most important purpose of peer review is to help authors to improve their work. Editors don’t just apply a minimal “good enough” standard for publication – they aim (within reasonable bounds) to apply a “good as can be” standard. As you may have experienced, having another person look over your work is a great way to get ideas to make it better. By commenting on where arguments could be strengthened, suggesting citations that may have been missed, or identifying errors that need to be corrected, reviewers are giving you the tools to make your paper the best it can be. Even if they recommend that your manuscript is rejected, there should be some constructive points that you can use in future writing.
2. To help the editor’s decision: While editors will have a broad range of expertise and know the needs of their journals, it’s impossible for them to know everything. They rely on subject experts to review manuscripts and tell them what will help to advance the field.
3. To keep the decision objective: It’s also important that publishing decisions are not made solely on the opinions of an editor. While they have the final decision on whether or not a manuscript will be published, the input of reviewers (who view generally view an anonymized version of your manuscript) is vital to limit any potential unconscious bias.

The peer review process

You send your manuscript to a journal, it stays with them for a few months and then you get a decision and some comments. But what happens in those few months? The process will vary between disciplines and even between journals. For the most part though, a manuscript will follow something similar to this basic path through peer review:

1. Submission and initial assessment: when your manuscript is first submitted, it will go through an initial assessment phase. This is often conducted by one of the more senior editors at the journal (the lead editor, editor-in-chief, etc.). They’ll check that the manuscript is within the scope of the journal and meets the journal’s basic standards for quality. If they think that the paper is appropriate for their journal and has the potential to be published, then the manuscript will move on to the next stage.
2. Review invitations: the second stage of the process is sometimes conducted by a member of the journal’s editorial board, sometimes by an associate editor and sometimes by the editor-in-chief themselves. At this point, they’ll begin considering who they would like to comment on your manuscript and sending out review invitations.
3. External review: after invitations have been sent out and accepted, the actual review takes place. There are generally at least two reviewers for any manuscript, but some journals will require more and others might only need one reviewer for certain types of papers. Some journals rely solely on their editorial boards for reviewers, others will only use external reviewers, most use a mixture of the two.
4. Review assessment and decision: once all of the required reviews for your manuscript have been submitted, the editor will bring them all together. They’ll weigh up the comments of each reviewer, along with their own thoughts and then come to a decision. This decision will then be sent to you along with the reviewers’ comments (minus any confidential comments that they have asked not to be passed on). If the manuscript is rejected, the process ends here.
5. Revision and resubmission: if you receive a ‘revise and resubmit’ decision, you’ll have the opportunity to make changes to the manuscript in response to the reviews. It’s very rare for a manuscript to be accepted for publication without going through at least one round of revisions.
6. Final decision: when your paper is resubmitted, it goes back to step one and repeats the process until a decision of acceptance or rejection has been made. At that point, you’ll either need to submit the manuscript to a different journal or begin the process of preparing the paper for publication.

Where to now?

• Back: An author's guide to peer review
• Next: Why does peer review take so long?
• Return to the ECR Hub homepage
• Ready to submit your manuscript? Discover the step-by-step guide to publishing with Edinburgh University Press