The peer’s point of view

Reviewers scrutinise the papers they receive

All the while we’ve been talking about peer review, whether we’re lamenting its failures or singing its praises, we’ve only heard from publishers and academics about going through the process (or not in some cases). What we haven’t done is look at it from the reviewer’s point of view. Well all that’s about to change.

Andy Hitchcock is a final year PhD student at the University of Sheffield, and has been lucky enough to review papers for three journals already (and no I’m not saying that sarcastically, it’s not everyone who gets that chance and it’s hugely beneficial if you want to continue your career in academia). I went to speak him about his experiences and to ask what he thinks of this controversial method of scientific publishing.