These slides will: - Walk you through a peer-review process - Practical tips for authors of scientific publications - Practical tips for future reviewers Slides accompany Elena Sügis talk at BREW 2020 workshop.

1. BREW 2020
21 May 2020
Seeing papers from
reviewer’s perspective
Elena Sügis
TARTU

2. BREW 2020
21 May 2020
International Conference of
Research in Computational Molecular Biology
BREW 2011 Tartu
BREW 2012 Bergen
Computational Biology
TARTU

3. AIM
• Walk you though a peer-review process
• Practical tips for authors of scientific publications
• Practical tips for future reviewers

4. BREW 2020
21 May 2020
Sounds familiar?

5. Peer review process

6. https://ucsd.libguides.com/aep-sci/peer
Scientific journals and regular magazines
PEER REVIEW PROCESS

7. https://ucsd.libguides.com/aep-sci/peer
Scientific journals and regular magazines

8. https://ucsd.libguides.com/aep-sci/peer
Scientific journals and regular magazines

9. Reviewers work. What it means for you
Determine whether the paper
should be accepted or rejected
https://ucsd.libguides.com/aep-sci/peer

10. https://ucsd.libguides.com/aep-sci/peer
Who are reviewers?
• Experts in the field, aka your
fellow scientists, contacted by
journal editors.
• Work for free. Spend their own
time to contribute to scientific
community.
• Doesn’t have conflict of
interests with the author of the
manuscript.

11. https://ucsd.libguides.com/aep-sci/peer
How do I decide to be a reviewer?
• Accept a paper if it belongs to
your field of expertise.
• Make sure there is no conflict of
interest.
• Make sure you have enough
time.
• Choose high quality journals
and conferences.

12. Peer review process. Reviewer’s work
Editor:
Match to journal topic
and adequate
formatting
Organisation,
Readability,
Language
Study conclusions,
Limitations,
Future direction of
research
Originality, innovation,
importance of the study
+
Literature review and
relevancy
Study design,
Methods,
Analysis,
Findings
Reproducibility

13. Tip. Fix one thing that you review at a time
Editor:
Match to journal topic
and adequate
formatting
Organisation,
Readability,
Language
Study conclusions,
Limitations,
Future direction of
research
Originality, innovation,
importance of the study
+
Literature review and
relevancy
Study design,
Methods,
Analysis,
Findings
Reproducibility

14. Novelty component
Originality, innovation,
importance of the study
+
Literature review and
relevancy

15. Introduction & Problem statement
Significance of the problem
• what is know about the problem
• what is not not known about the problem
• how research fills the gap
Literature review (can be an independent section)
• why is it even important to study?

16. Aim of the research
• Clearly drawn from literature review.
• Stated as: hypothesis, review question, research aims,
research questions.
• Help to evaluate the methods used to address this aim and
the reported results.

17. Shape component
Organisation,
Readability,
Language
• Are all essential paper components such as introduction, methods, results, discussion,
etc are present?
• Do they contain relevant information and are logically connected?
• Readability of the text, typos and misplaced or unfinished captions, etc.
• Language correction before a submission.

18. Methods component
Study design,
Methods,
Analysis,
Findings
Reproducibility
• Do all the experiments and data make sense?
• Did the authors carefully designed and performed
the experiments
• Did they analyse and interpreted the results in a
comprehensible way?
• Are reported results reproducible?

19. Methods component
Study design,
Methods,
Analysis,
Findings
Reproducibility
• Do all the experiments and data make sense?
• Did the authors carefully designed and performed
the experiments
• Did they analyse and interpreted the results in a
comprehensible way?
• Are reported results reproducible?

20. Data
• FAIR data standards (data which meet principles of findability,
accessibility, interoperability, and reusability).
• Use appropriate repository to download and store the data.
• Cite dataset DOI.
• Provide substantial description of the datasets.
• Report the version of the database/time&date of access.

21. Code
• Share your code (use github or
similar)
• Publish version of your code.
Use DOI
• Add licence (how other people
can use your code)
• Add instructions how to install
(including dependences)
• Document your code
Add usage guide how to
execute your code
https://github.com/esugis/hena

22. Code
• Share your code (use github or
similar)
• Publish version of your code.
Use DOI
• Add licence (how other people
can use your code)
• Add instructions how to install
(including dependences)
• Document your code
Add usage guide how to
execute your code
https://github.com/esugis/hena

23. Code
• Share your code (use github or
similar)
• Publish version of your code.
Use DOI
• Add licence (how other people
can use your code)
• Add instructions how to install
(including dependences)
• Document your code
Add usage guide how to
execute your code
https://github.com/esugis/hena

24. Code. Licences
https://help.github.com/en/github/creating-cloning-and-archiving-repositories/licensing-a-repository

25. Code
• Share your code (use github or
similar)
• Publish version of your code.
Use DOI
• Add licence (how other people
can use your code)
• Add instructions how to install
(including dependences)
• Document your code
Add usage guide how to
execute your code
https://github.com/esugis/hena

26. Code
• Share your code (use github or
similar)
• Publish version of your code.
Use DOI
• Add licence (how other people
can use your code)
• Add instructions how to install
(including dependences)
• Document your code
Add usage guide how to
execute your code
https://github.com/esugis/hena

27. Discussion component
Study conclusions,
Limitations,
Future direction of
research

28. Reviewers findings
Peer review of the manuscript X
SUMMARY
MAJOR COMMENTS
MINOR COMMENTS

29. Reviewers findings
Peer review of the manuscript X
SUMMARY
MAJOR COMMENTS
MINOR COMMENTS
specify exactly
the point of weakness and
where in the paper

30. Reviewers feedback. Bad example.
“This makes no sense.
I reject this publication/
major revisions are needed.”
NB! This form of the critical comments don’t give an author any actionable feedback.
Is my math incorrect?
Are the methods inappropriate?
Are my conclusions inconsistent?

31. Reviewers feedback. Good example.
Comments should be convertible to action point, e.g.
Fix XYZ -> get awesome result

32. Take home message
• Peer-review is there for a reason and it is not scary
• As an authors of scientific publications:
• pay attention to the reproducibility
• become a reviewer
• As a peer reviewer:
• don’t be harsh
• be specific in your comments
• provide feedback in action point convertible manner

33. Contact me
Elena Sügis
elena.sugis@ut.ee
BREW 2020
21 May 2020