I agree with everything said above. However, there are a few critical issues which are dismissed by reviewers. I think the followings should be avoided:

1. If you are not 100% familiar with the main themes of a manuscript, do not accept reviewing it.

2. Before using negative terms, such as "to my surprise", "absolutely wrong", "weird", etc, make sure your criticism is actually valid (first, authors are your colleagues, so respect must be mutual. Second, give it 1% that authors might have known something that you do not know. Should clarify that by "you" I mean someone who reviews)

3. Do not pass manuscripts to your PhD students or even worse, to your master students to do the job. First, students think they have to reject any manuscripts, no matter how good or bad they are. Second, their knowledge is not good enough to review a paper. Unfortunately, this happens a lot.

4. Be careful not to impose your personal prejudice on your work. Treat manuscripts fairly. Do not make a decision before even start reading the manuscript.

5. If you want to go for holidays, such as Xmas, postpone the job or do not accept it.

You might find the points above very obvious, but believe me I have experienced them all. Sometimes, reviewers make utterly wrong comments and editors take their recommendations blindly. In general, treat manuscripts the way you would like someone treat your own manuscripts.

Cheers,

Ahmad

You are certainly a mighty warrior. 100 even without 's' is something far beyond my possibility. 10 per year?

About 50% rejection is, I believe, a norm.

When I am the author I expect from reviewers suggestions for improving the paper. When I am a reviewer I consider providing suggestions for improving the paper to be my responsibility. Each journal has rules for reviewers. Everything is specified there. if you choose to reject the paper, you have to make suggestions for improving it anyway.

A reviewer must assess the novelty, importance and, of course, correctness. Then the text itself, language, figures and captions, composition , clarity, citations among other stuff, for example the place of the manuscript in the general discourse on the topic. Quite a lot of reading is usually required, unless the topic corresponds to your narrow specialization, which happens rarely.

Some people cannot write, me for example. Writing an article is a pain. And that does not mean they were not taught.

Dear Dr. Igor Goliney,:

Thank you for your response. Prior to 2016, I used to get one or two invitations to reviews manuscripts. However, since 2016, I have been receiving 2-3 invitations in average per week to review scientific papers. And, I am still receiving a lot of invitations to review. I think it also depends on the type of research field one reviews.

If we would have to multiply twenty four months by four weeks/month, and by three papers per week, the number would go to 288 for twenty four months. Since I do not accept all the invitations sent to me by the editors, as you can see my number is well below to 288 / 24 months.

I totally agree with your points. It’s a lot of work to review and patience is needed to review a scientific paper. However, mostly I review during the evening or during the weekends while many of our colleges choose to go for vacation or spend time with their family and friends. I greatly enjoy volunteering in my life.

Thank you for your insights and sharing your experiences with the research-gate members here. I hope others also choose to share their experiences here.

The problem with papers is often that they (should) describe some kind of novelty. In that case a reviewer should fairly but also critically evaluate whether the approach is correct or might contribute to a better understanding. To write in a foreign language is always a challenge, however, for a good paper one should offer a bit more help.

If you do this, and educate, and write own papers, and supervise....I would expect that you do not have time for more than 10 papers per year. Consequently it sounds that some of these objects you do with lower efficiency. And...by the way...I guess that most of people who will answer here also working more than 8h per day and during weekend. Otherwise you cannot get a position in research.

Regarding the rejection: I guess that many papers are not really worth to be published. They are mostly the consequence of publishing pressure or a bad supervision because the responsible scientist has no time (traveling around, acquiring money for the next project, busy with administration work etc) and is not able to evaluate critically what new PhD students are producing or creating. The consequence are (manipulated) data with low reliability and misleading conclusions. This is also some kind of responsibility of reviewers, and since this is not easy to find out you need either (even) more time or you simply check whether everything sound OK (especially the English) and most of (your) works cited and that's all. (If I am writing "your" I do not mean you personally).

My recommendation to all reviewers: Please don't try to review as many as possible papers but look for the worth and the correctness. Take the time time you need! Because of you people start to concentrate on subjects which are possibly incorrect!

Unfortunately, there is no statistic available which expresses how many papers have been reviewed by a certain scientist. I f this would be the case, I would take care on the quality of the reviewers since if they are that productive (100 papers per year) they cannot even do a proper job if they won't do anything else. It would mean that the need to evaluate the work of several people done over months or even years in only 3 days. To me this sounds very "arrogant". If I review a paper, it takes me days and sometimes weeks if I see the novelty and the worth to spend my lifetime to improve it by my comments.

Thanks Gert Nolze, for your insight on reviewing processes.

The problem with papers is often that they (should) describe some kind of novelty. In that case, a reviewer should fairly but also critically evaluate whether the approach is correct or might contribute to a better understanding. To write in a foreign language is always a challenge, however, for a good paper one should offer a bit more help.

I noted it, and I agree on it - Thank you. Critical evaluation of the manuscript. At this stage, I would look at the big picture and then go for details.

If you do this, and educate, and write own papers, and supervise....I would expect that you do not have time for more than ten papers per year. Consequently, it sounds that some of these objects you do with lower efficiency. And...by the way...I guess that most people who will answer here also working more than eight hr per day and during the weekend. Otherwise, you cannot get a position in research.

I noted it and I agree with it. Most faculty members do spend quite a good amount of time to review, despite their heavily packed schedule. However, some would choose rather not to work during the weekends and evening. This allows them time to spend with their families, which is great if they can really manage to do that.

Regarding the rejection: I guess that many papers are not worth to be published. They are mostly the consequence of publishing pressure or bad supervision because the responsible scientist has no time (traveling around, acquiring money for the next project, busy with administration work, etc.) and is not able to evaluate critically what new Ph.D. students are producing or creating. The consequence is (manipulated) data with low reliability and misleading conclusions. This is also some responsibility of reviewers, and since this is not easy to find out you need either (even) more time or you check whether everything sound OK (especially the English) and most of (your) works cited, and that's all. (If I am writing "you're" I do not mean you personally).

Sometimes I wonder if the journals (assistant editors) do an adequate screening of manuscript submitted for review before sending manuscripts to reviewers.

Unfortunately, there is no statistic available which expresses how many papers have been reviewed by a certain scientist. I f this would be the case, I would take care on the quality of the reviewers since if they are that productive (100 papers per year), they cannot even do a proper job if they won't do anything else. It would mean that the need to evaluate the work of several people done over months or even years in only three days. To me, this sounds very "arrogant." If I review a paper, it takes me days and sometimes weeks if I see the novelty and the worth to spend my lifetime to improve it with my comments.

Most of the time, the manuscript is just sitting on the reviewer’s table for over two weeks. Not because the manuscript is being reviewed but because the reviewer does not have enough time to go over it.

Here are some of the issues with submitted manuscript as:

• The submitted manuscripts do not include enough background or literature work relevant to authors' work. As a scientist, its important to keep track of the work being done by other researchers in the field.
• Quality of the figure, caption, error bars, legends and the overall presentation is poor. Graphs are essential components of any scientific manuscripts. However, if it is not properly representing the result, it will make the life of both the reviewer and reader difficult. The graph should be drawn in a way its easy to interpret the results.
• Even worse, no or little description is found for the figures and tables reported in the manuscript. In some cases, I find that authors are mixed up with terminologies like “conclusion” and “summary”, which mean differently.
• Some theoretical manuscripts I have reviewed contained too many figures and too little analysis. I encourage authors to sufficiently analyse their results before submitting for publication.
• The major problem is that many manuscripts I have reviewed are incomprehensible; sentences are too long. I always encourage authors to use simple and short sentences to explain their results, considering the general readership. It's always best to ask their colleagues to read their manuscripts. So that they can send some good feedback. The authors can also acknowledge the the colleagues who read their manuscript. Its worth the effort. There are more to talk about it. I encourage other researchers to share their experiences too.

After all the fruitful discussions above, i want to point out some important points. In fact every manuscript should have some novelty in its work. The presentation should be clear and understandable whether it is text, figure or table. Every aspect of figure and table should be explained clearly. In most of the paper english is the problem. So paper should be written clearly. It should not have grammatical or typographical mistakes. The main role of reviewer is to comment on the manuscript to improve its quality. Rejection of the manuscript can not be avoided once the paper is written casually in any of the above aspects.

Thanks Virendra Nath Rai for providing additional insight on reviewing process.

Let me list some of the take away from your response as:

• Novelty is a must.
• Clear text, figure, and table is a must, and data are analyzed in detail.
• Minor grammatical errors can be rectified, however, the paper should have no major grammatical errors.
• Rejection is related to the paper quality – 50% presentation and 50% scientific content.

From my point of view it is more an more hard to find scientists who are working in the same field so that they are competent enough (divergence of science), who have the time to think about new approaches they possibly never heard before (novelty), and who are good enough to judge what is good English. I assume that brilliant papers are rejected because of the weak English. I wonder whether it would be a better option to have there native speakers who correct the text only with respect to an acceptable language (grammer etc), and scientists are more focusing on the novelty of the idea. Missing scale or error bars even an technician can find and point out before a real evaluation starts. Why high paid scientist need to underline a possibly "weak" English (Nono-native speakers like Chineses are per se under suspicion that their English need to be improved, but what they should do?) or missing error bars. They better should find out whether the used mathematics or physical approaches are unsuitable and why. They should at least approximately estimate whether a claimed temperature during tests or measured results are hard to believe since they did not match our current understanding and models. What I see as very problematic is an increasing tendency of data manipulation (like smoothing, deletion or replacement of outlier) in order to make everything more ideal. To find such manipulations is clearly more time consuming than a statement of bars are missing and the English is poor and need to be improved. Better a poor English than manipulated (or too optimistic) data which guides a lot of people into a wrong direction. Publications which report about failures are possibly more beneficial since these papers prevent that such investigations are done again and again.

For me, the important is the attitude. When I write a paper I know that it is my personal point of view and when I send the article to review I want to know the point of view of another specialist. If a receive the sentence "Accept as is" I feel some deception, I want to discuss my work and learn a little more.

"Accept as is" and P. Grima Gallardo:

I have the same opinion as P. Grima Gallardo. No manuscript is perfect, and I am not excited to receive recommendations of this type in the first round of revision for my paper as well. However, there was one incident where this type of recommendation was applied to my paper I had submitted for publication in the IEEE Journal in 2014 (and I could not deny it) as:

Research Magnetic Anisotropy and Magnetoresistance Properties of Co/A...

The paper was prepared using Latex (Thanks Belaid Moa) and was carefully proof-read. As given in the acknowledgment section, the paper was also read by Prof. Eric E Fullerton - my postdoc adviser, during my days at the Center for Magnetic Recording Research (https://cmrr.ucsd.edu/) at UC San Diego, CA, USA (2014 - 2015).

Let me re-write the response recieved from Gert Nolze and highlight the important information in it (shown by the bold fonts):

• From my point of view, it is more an more hard to find scientists who are working in the same field so that they are competent enough (divergence of science), who have the time to think about new approaches they possibly never heard before (novelty), and who are good enough to judge what is good English. I assume that brilliant papers are rejected because of the weak English. I wonder whether it would be a better option to have there native speakers who correct the text only concerning an acceptable language (grammar etc.), and scientists are more focusing on the novelty of the idea.
• Missing scale or error bars even a technician can find and point out before a real evaluation starts. Why high paid scientist need to underline a possibly "weak" English (Non-native speakers like Chineses are per se under suspicion that their English need to be improved, but what they should do?) or missing error bars. They better should find out whether the used mathematics or physical approaches are unsuitable and why. They should at least approximately estimate whether a claimed temperature during tests or measured results are hard to believe since they did not match our current understanding and models. What I see as very problematic is an increasing tendency of data manipulation (like smoothing, deletion or replacement of outlier) in order to make everything more ideal. To find such manipulations is clearly more time consuming than a statement of bars are missing and the English is poor and need to be improved. Better a poor English than manipulated (or too optimistic) data which guides a lot of people into a wrong direction.
• Publications which report about failures are possibly more beneficial since these papers prevent that such investigations are done again and again.

Language, in any scientific publishing, is a means of communication, and there is always a better way to communicate. In my opinion, scientists need to express their results in a plain language, considering the general readership. I hope readers will find the information posed by Gert Nolze very helpful.

I agree with everything said above. However, there are a few critical issues which are dismissed by reviewers. I think the followings should be avoided:

1. If you are not 100% familiar with the main themes of a manuscript, do not accept reviewing it.

2. Before using negative terms, such as "to my surprise", "absolutely wrong", "weird", etc, make sure your criticism is actually valid (first, authors are your colleagues, so respect must be mutual. Second, give it 1% that authors might have known something that you do not know. Should clarify that by "you" I mean someone who reviews)

3. Do not pass manuscripts to your PhD students or even worse, to your master students to do the job. First, students think they have to reject any manuscripts, no matter how good or bad they are. Second, their knowledge is not good enough to review a paper. Unfortunately, this happens a lot.

4. Be careful not to impose your personal prejudice on your work. Treat manuscripts fairly. Do not make a decision before even start reading the manuscript.

5. If you want to go for holidays, such as Xmas, postpone the job or do not accept it.

You might find the points above very obvious, but believe me I have experienced them all. Sometimes, reviewers make utterly wrong comments and editors take their recommendations blindly. In general, treat manuscripts the way you would like someone treat your own manuscripts.

Cheers,

Ahmad

Thanks Ahmad Zafari. My comments are in bold black.

I agree with everything said above. However, there are a few critical issues which are dismissed by reviewers. I think the followings should be avoided:

1. If you are not 100% familiar with the main themes of a manuscript, do not accept reviewing it.

I appreciate the great insight posted here on reviewing process. However, in practice, and in a real-world situation, no one can be 100% perfect. Yes, the reviewer’s are selected by the journal editors, and they should send the paper to only those who are expert in the field, and I believe they do in most cases.

2. Before using negative terms, such as "to my surprise", "absolutely wrong", "weird", etc, make sure your criticism is actually valid (first, authors are your colleagues, so respect must be mutual. Second, give it 1% that authors might have known something that you do not know. Should clarify that by "you" I mean someone who reviews)

Agree. Personal feeling, emotions, etc. should have no place in scientific judgment.

3. Do not pass manuscripts to your Ph.D. students or even worse, to your master students to do the job. First, students think they have to reject any manuscripts, no matter how good or bad they are. Second, their knowledge is not good enough to review a paper. Unfortunately, this happens a lot.

Confidentiality is extremely important, and every one should maintain confidentiality throughout.

4. Be careful not to impose your prejudice on your work. Treat manuscripts fairly. Do not decide before even start reading the manuscript.

Even if the manuscript was not well written, its scientific content could still be highly important. A good reviewer should send critical comments aiming to help authors to improve the quality of their manuscripts. No one should send rejections without providing sufficient comments.

5. If you want to go for holidays, such as Xmas, postpone the job or do not accept it.

You might find the points above very obvious, but believe me, I have experienced them all. Sometimes, reviewers make utterly wrong comments, and editors take their recommendations blindly. In general, treat manuscripts the way you would like someone treats your manuscripts.

Most papers I have reviewed so far (and still doing), Editors choose up to four reviewers for one manuscript. At most, I find most of my comments are very well-reflected in the responses provided by other reviewers. That’s how I cross-check my recommendations. I want to be fair to the authors, and to the editors who trusted in me and in my qualification, and requested to provide suitability of the publication of the submitted manuscript for review.

Great stimulating discussions ongoing here. Thanks everyone.

On the comment of not giving the manuscript to PhD student, I feel that to train young scientist and academicians in the art of reviewing it is an absolute necessity that they must review few manuscripts during their PhD period. Otherwise they will not be able to do justice in reviewing during their early career. Although it is the responsibility of prof. that they just don't send back the comments made by student, but thoroughly review it himself and teach the student where he needs improvement.

In term of confidentiality, students won't steal any idea from the work in the manuscript, atleast not till they are working with that Prof. (can't say if the prof. wants otherwise).

Akeshwar Singh Yadav there are better ways to train students. First, students in the same research group can simply review each other's manuscripts. Second, supervisors should spend a fair amount of time editing students' manuscripts. During this process they need to critically review the manuscripts so their students learn to what crucial issues pay attention when they write and read a paper/manuscript. I think the latter is more relevant to the main topic of this thread opened by Conrad Rizal. If supervisors strictly review and edit manuscripts, not only students learn how to write a good manuscript and to critically review one, but also makes the job a lot easier for reviewers to follow the main themes of their manuscripts.

Sometimes students mislead their supervisors by making wrong comments on manuscripts, leading to their rejection unfairly. It is like teaching your kids how to drive. You use your own car to teach them, not other people's cars :))

I, myself, am a young researcher, so I am definitely not as as experienced as all the people commented above. I just wanted to share some of my bad experiences which I believe would not happen if the points I mentioned earlier were avoided.

Dr. Zafari, you are absolutely right on all the points you mentioned, also you have sufficient experience to say these things. But in my personal opinion, I feel that in a group (especially in smaller ones) people know each other's work and are also well aware of each other's mindsets, so they don't need to think out of the box. And as all are more or less friends they will try to do it in informal way. But if something comes to them for which they have to give a responsible formal reply, that would make them work hard (ofcourse lots of things depends upon the supervisor). Thanks for your valuable comments.

Like myself, I am confident that the majority of reviewers are more than eager to help authors of the submitted manuscript. Like many other scientists, I review papers to provide constructive comments and help improve it's quality. What I look for in the article? I encourage authors to ask oneself enough questions before submitting the manuscript for review such as:

• Is this manuscript easy to understand? This criterion is very important.
• Is your research question clearly defined?
• Is your research question is appropriately answered?
• How significant is your work about others in the field?
• Are your methods adequately described?
• Are your main outcome measures clear?
• Are your interpretations and conclusions focused on and derived from the data?
• Are your references up-to-date and relevant to your work?
• Do your abstract and conclusion accurately reflect your manuscript?

I encourage other researchers to feel free to add more.

"Share your knowledge. It is a way to achieve immortality.”

― Dalai Lama XIV

Overall incremental contribution to the area, clarity & correctness of the message, and weight should be given to originality of Idea of the manuscript.

A major issue ..............What about citing 7 -8 less relevant papers of the reviewer, I am facing this quite often !

Regards

As Ajitanshu Vedrtnam might have noticed, as a reviewer, we can read the responses provided by other reviewers for the same paper in the "Reviewer" portal. Its indeed surprising to find that some reviewers (I would say, in a very few incidents) choose to send a list of up-to 13 of theirs' (or their collaborator's) papers and request that authors cite them all. 13 is a large number!

Dear Conrad Rizal,

Response to your question. Reviewers look for accuracy, timeliness, and appropriateness of the manuscript that can greatly affect the chances of publishing your research. Apart from these, reviewers check for the scientific merits of the manuscript, its methods, and research misconduct (if any).

Peer review process ensures that the manuscript is easy to comprehend, lacks any gap areas, and is significant in the research field. It also ensures that the research findings are valid and reliable. Without an effective peer review process, the manuscript cannot withstand the standards of scientific knowledge, resulting in dissemination of false or flawed knowledge.

So it a big responsibility of reviewer to thoroughly go through review process lastly accept those manuscript for review whom you have a great expertise.

Thank you,

Dear Rizal,

You have mention " As Ajitanshu Vedrtnam might have noticed, as a reviewer, we can read the responses provided by other reviewers for the same paper in the "Reviewer" portal. Its indeed surprising to find that some reviewers choose to send a list of up-to 13 of theirs' (or their collaborator's) papers and request authors to cite them all. 13 is a large number "

But this is rarely happening only with the reviewer who are very new in this area or the journals are not well recognized and publishing the articles in a week by just taking article processing charges (APC) .

But, if you talk about the reputed publisher like springer, ACS, Elsevier, IOP, Nature publishing groups etc they never tolerate these types of comments and if the reviewer have ask to put more then 3 own article in script. They straightforward warn the reviewer or they may not consider the review as authentic and send to other reviewer for peer review process.

Following

As a reviewer of an article for a journal, we have to seek originality, original results that indeed augment the knowledge tower of the field in some ways, either vertical, horizontal or skewed. Then the presentation of the manuscript is the next issue we have to look at, if it does follow standards and of course adequate references well. These are the main aside from correcting typing errors, misplaced words and statements so that the article is not only possesses knowledge but readable as well with clarity.

Regards,

Following

• Make suggestions on how the author can improve clarity and the quality of presentation.
• Confirm whether you feel the subject of the paper is interesting to justify its length. If you recommend shortening, show areas where you think it’s required.
• It’s not the reviewer’s job to edit the paper for English, but it is helpful if you correct the English where the technical meaning is unclear.

I agree with Prof. Dmytro that It’s not the reviewer’s job to edit the paper for English.I think the following points should take in consider when reviewing any paper:

• The article must be technically sound.
• The article must be original writing that enhances the existing body of knowledge in the given subject area.
• The references that are provided must be applicable and sufficient.

Contribution of the knowledge , Novelty and comprehensive structure.

In my opinion (from the authors side)-

1. The reviewer should not forced the author to cite there paper(s) if it is not citable in any sense.

2. The reviewer must focus on the main concern of the paper. He must think of what the author want to establish. Results should have more weight

3. Working on the preestablished topic, some time it is difficult to write the introduction on same topic in different language. Specially, for the authors whose first language is not English.

4. For all the authors, and in all the journals the review process must be double blind.

5. The authors expect getting review report with real criticism, without too late. But being rejected after six month on some paper is really pathetic.