Author: John Wagner, MD, PhD Published on 9/16/2019 11:39:00 AM

Happy Peer Review Week!  The week of September 16 has been designated as Peer Review Week, now for 5 years running.  Peer Review Week is a great opportunity to thank you for your terrific support of the publication process through your peer review effort.  Your voluntary contributions are crucial to ASCPT’s family of journals.  Thank you for being a peer reviewer. If you are not a peer reviewer and would like to be, we welcome your interest by updating your ASCPT member profile, or emailing Rachel@ascpt.org.

Quality peer review – the theme for Peer Review Week this year and as is done by the ASCPT Journal Family – has a number of critical principles:

• Solid expertise is needed.
• Independence is required.
• A selection process, based on reviewer expertise, is needed.
• Peer review is enhanced by training and guidance.  ASCPT is dedicated to helping members enhance their peer review skills, hosting a regular Journal Review Club and an upcoming Clinical and Translational Science (CTS) peer review webinar on November 13th.  Mark your calendars!
• Adherence to cycle times is a best practice. Publication is high pressure endeavor and quick turn-around is highly valuable to authors.   Communication to the editorial office regarding questions and extensions is appreciated.
• Detailed feedback to authors is critical. Authors rely on the excellent, quality feedback from reviewers to improve their work.  Again, peer review improves the quality of published work and is crucial for decision-making.

Good peer review leads to quality publications, a hallmark of the ASCPT Journal Family. Great results, like the recent 2018 impact factor of 3.989 at CTS, are due to both excellent authors and terrific peer review. Thank you!