What are the key points that the reviewers of a research consider to determine the significance and originality of a work?
1) How SIGNIFICANT is this research? How important is the problem studied to the community? Does the research stimulate further work?
2) How ORIGINAL is this research? Are the problems and approaches new? Is this a novel combination of existing techniques? Does the research points out differences from related research? Does it address a new problem or one that has not been studied in depth?
[https://www.amazon.com/how-research-todays-tips-tools-ebook/dp/b01i5jjdxc]
If a reviewer is an expert of a particular field, then he/she after glancing at the manuscript from that field can immediately tell if the work is original or not. Its is just because of experience and nothing else. Even they do not need any software to detect plagiarism.
When I review a manuscript for a journal that cares about novelty/originality, I check if the research questions, the methods, and the results are advancing what is already known in the subject area.
Novelty can only be established by comparing the paper to previous work. Thus, it is entirely dependent on experience. Furthermore, just because a study is novel or original it doesn't mean it's significant. Significance is a measure of the study to be a catalyst for future studies or development. The burden of proof is upon the authors to show significance.
I have come across manuscripts where the authors claim novelty by saying they are the first to do a certain study. In most cases the authors would have done an inadequate literature review.
I agree with Edmond. Many a manuscripts are submitted for publication without throrouh literature survey. If the reviewers are not specialists of the topics concerned they have no option to verfy except Google search!
1) How SIGNIFICANT is this research? How important is the problem studied to the community? Does the research stimulate further work?
2) How ORIGINAL is this research? Are the problems and approaches new? Is this a novel combination of existing techniques? Does the research points out differences from related research? Does it address a new problem or one that has not been studied in depth?
[https://www.amazon.com/how-research-todays-tips-tools-ebook/dp/b01i5jjdxc]
I do an in depth search of literature to check if the major works in the field has been cited. I also look at the methodology and results and if results produce a perfect fit to the expected I get very suspicious. If they are close to expected, they are usually the correct results. I then look at the applicability of the findings to the field and use my experience to judge if it is really significant
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