The importance of peer review in ensuring quality and impact for journals

Peer review is a key stage of ensuring quality and impact for journals but reviewing can have the lowest profile of all publishing roles. To raise the reviewer profile at BMJ Leader, the journal is aiming to reduce the barriers to participation and increase access to the publishing process with hopes of improving scholarly output and acknowledging reviewers’ valued contributions.

Academic journals would not exist without authors, editors and readers. While this dependence is self-evident, the same is true of journal reviewers. Yet of all the journal roles, reviewing can be perceived as the lowest profile, most time consuming, least rewarding and least rewarded. At BMJ Leader, we are reviewing the experiences of all contributors from authors to staff, from reviewers to editors. By applying a social justice lens to our publishing processes, we plan to follow in other journals’ footsteps in contributing to the goals of equity, antiracism and anti-oppression1 and support the reporting standards for race, ethnicity and culture from the American Psychological Association introduced this year. We hope this process will enhance the experience for all, including of course, reviewers whose work is the cornerstone of the peer-review process, and make publishing at the BMJ Leader more accessible and well-supported.

Academic publishing provides one forum for many to have a voice. There are clear incentives and imperatives for many in their academic careers for authorship including the impact of publishing on an individuals’ career stature, supporting collaboration and driving impact. However, authorship in peer-reviewed journals remains a domain that privileges the most dominant voices (eg, based on nationality, race, gender, access to higher status educational institutions, etc) and those with the most power. Liu et al 2 viewed through the lens of social justice; however, more work is needed to encourage participation from authors especially for those from systemically oppressed groups.

Similarly, the benefits of editing are clear: editors have the privilege of setting the direction of the journal and being part of an academic team. Editing is highly valued as a scholarly contribution in the promotion and tenure process of university scholars and viewed as a leadership role. There is significant social capital in being an editor and often a monetary stipend is provided. There are also less explicit privileges such as more opportunity to write editorials or unsolicited academic papers.

The benefits for reviewers are less obvious and do not match the huge contribution that reviewers make to academic publishing. Reviewers are traditionally anonymous—though this is changing, with recognition through platforms such as ORCID or Web of Science Reviewer Recognition Services. Peer-reviewing enables and ensures ‘good science’. While the reviewing process can be traced back to 1665, the term ‘peer reviewer’ only emerged in the 1970s. Initially, peer reviewing came from the concept of ‘guarding’ the prestige of a journal.3 Three centuries later, this model has developed, and there are multiple ways reviewers can make a difference. Reviewers are the key part of the editorial team, ensuring solid communication and robustness of the publications. ‘Revise and resubmit’ is what we hope to receive as authors from an initial submission, as well as feedback that, if clear and actionable, makes a real difference to the quality and utility of what is published. Reviewers help ensure that the standards of research and ethics have been met, and through this standard-setting role they contribute hugely to journal quality and impact in practice. Reviewers also read with a ‘reader’s eye’, often considering from the perspective of a novice in the author(s)’ fields. They bring their significant expertise and experience to spot things editors might miss or not be aware of. For example, recently in BMJ Leader, a reviewer suggested a brief report be repositioned as a personal reflective piece, which was subsequently published under Leadership in the Mirror. Every reviewer brings new insight, experiences and knowledge that drive the collaborative world of journal publications.

Without reviewers, peer-review can’t work: papers get stuck, authors and editors get frustrated and ultimately science moves forward more slowly. Reviewing can be rewarding, as well as representing a selfless contribution to scholarship; it can connect people to academic communities, for potential learning and peer support. Through reviewing people can gain knowledge, experience and confidence, and this can be a prelude to editing. It can support authoring, as one explores a field and sees opportunities for interconnection and new scholarship. And it can contribute tangible continuing professional development and supporting professional recognition. Moreso, reviewers play a key role in shaping academia, research and innovation.

But when we approach potential reviewers, too many people say: “Really? Me? I don’t think I am who journals are looking for: what do I have to offer?”. And too often these views come from individuals from marginalised groups especially when we approach trainees, allied health professionals, patients, caregivers or professionals outside of the healthcare sector. So, who are we looking for as a BMJ Leader reviewer? Simply put: YOU. You do not need:

• To be ‘an academic’—understanding of the workplace and leadership in action is equally important. For us to demonstrate impact, we need to ensure our publications meet the needs of those in practice;

• To have a particular leadership role;

• To be a clinician—still less a physician;

• To be established or prominent in your field, or well-on in your career;

• To be an expert on a particular area of the literature: people frequently review outside their sweet spot, and we often look for at least one reviewer to reflect where we think readers are coming from paired to a more expert (from a theoretical perspective) reviewer;

• Prior experience as an author or reviewer.

We need your varied experience and knowledge. We need you to be willing and able to offer time to review for the journal. We want you to be able to align the peer-reviewed content of the journal to the vision of BMJ Leader and to safeguard the relevance of publications to the journal’s mission. Finally, we want contributors who are willing and able to drive BMJ Leader’s mission to impact the quality of our health systems and leadership. Different perspectives are crucial in enabling diversity and application in the ‘real world’, it is key that reviewers can give constructive and empathetic feedback. We want to support the authors in service of helping readers understand the publications and use their learning in practice.

Moving forward we want to support and recognise reviewers. By listening to authors, reviewers, editors and the board, we are planning to run introductory virtual webinar sessions for reviewers and create guides to support the reviewing process. BMJ Leader chats about reviewing and other processes within publishing will support this aim. We are introducing ‘meet the author/editor’ sessions, open to people who have reviewed for BMJ Leader as a thank you for their valuable contribution and support. In doing so, we aim to create a community across reviewers, enabling peer learning and opportunities to contribute to the journal and its future.

It is important for BMJ Leader to have an impact, and to do this, we need enthusiastic reviewers to keep up with our growing submissions and output. We also need more reviewer diversity (including and not limited to geography (especially the Global South), within and outside the health professions, and theoretical or design expertise). BMJ Leader seeks to diversify perspectives and to challenge notions that there is only ‘one way’ to lead and ‘one perspective that’s “right”’. We want to embrace social justice and support antiracism and anti-oppression; diversification of our reviewers is one way to do so. That is why we intend to build a diverse pool of reviewers to tackle our ever-evolving range of papers (topics, geographies, roles) and ensure support for the journal and its real-world impact. Through this programme of work, we will make publishing at the BMJ Leader more welcoming and supportive.

To implement this change, we as editors of BMJ Leader want to hear from you, particularly individuals new to the journal, learners, healthcare professionals and patients, and understand your perspective on improving the review process through our BMJ Reviewers survey (https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/6DPB8Q7). In particular, please tell us:

• What would interest you to become a reviewer or to mentor reviewers?

• What holds you back from putting yourself forward as a reviewer?

• What are your ideas about how to make reviewing more rewarding at a journal like BMJ Leader?

Working together we can improve diversity, impact and quality of BMJ Leader. Finally, we also want to say a huge thank you to our reviewers, which has increased from 49 reviewers in 2019 to over 170 so far in 2023. Thank you for the hours you spend unconditionally supporting fellow authors, progressing diverse leadership scholarly activity and ultimately being part of the BMJ Leader journey to accessible and supportive publishing.