I believe that if we want to accelerate the reviewing process and improve the publishing quality, we should enhance the reward of the reviewers. The editors spend several months to find a good reviewer who accept to judge a paper given their very limited time. On the other hand, If he accepts to review the paper it would take too much time beyond the deadline. I think If we link the review process to the h-index, it would improve the whole process. For example judging 5 papers should be equal to publishing one, regardless of the reviewer name status (i.e. known or anonymous) on the online version of the published article.

I believe that if we want to accelerate the reviewing process and improve the publishing quality, we should enhance the reward of the reviewers. The editors spend several months to find a good reviewer who accept to judge a paper given their very limited time. On the other hand, If he accepts to review the paper it would take too much time beyond the deadline. I think If we link the review process to the h-index, it would improve the whole process. For example judging 5 papers should be equal to publishing one, regardless of the reviewer name status (i.e. known or anonymous) on the online version of the published article.

Dear Colleague,

I believe that it is almost impossible to compare the process of publishing a paper 20 years ago with present time. Now, editors and publishers expect that when a ms. is submitted, the ms. is edited in such a way that it is almost ready to be published, including the editing of supplemental files,  etc. Before that was mainly the effort of the editor(s) and publisher' office. And this takes a lot of time from an author, in addition of writing a whole ms! I believe that it is not possible to add more pressure on reviewers that are willing to cooperate for nothing. To make a proper review of a ms. needs expertise from the reviewer, but also certain amount of time to do the job. Furthermore, editors set time for the review process of a ms., but sometimes they overlook the length and content of different mss. and set inappropriate demands on a reviewer that gets annoyed receiving automatic messages with "a gentle remainder" that he/she is delayed with a review.  But also editors and journals overlook the fact that many of the "ggod",  fair reviewers are already giving a lot of their time to the process of reviewing mss. In addition, we cannot ignore the fact that as a result of the current pressure on authors concerning publications, many of the submitted mss. are half "done", apparently expecting that reviewers add suggestions and also their ideas on the matter. Thus, it is not just to shorten the review process or the whole process of publishing a ms. If we want to keep the quality of publications, then we have to accept that the whole process is something more complex than just to write the text of a ms.

I am an old researcher. My first ms was submitted to a journal by sending 3 hard copies via  post and waiting for the reviewers' comments marked on the margins and send reply letter to reviewers the same way. Today, despite of the use of Editorial Manager interfaces the process takes almost the same time as 20 years ago. I think we need to revolutionize the entire process. Here are some suggestions:

- Create a database for reviewers and keywords for their fields.

- Automate the reviewer selection process.

- Reward reviewers who accept to review and finish in time and apply penalties to those who refuse to review or delay revisions (Abotalib's suggestion seems good).

- Add a review record or index to scopus and similar sites.

What do you think? Any additional suggestions?

I agree with Rashed.

Dear Rashed,

Firstly MSS should be submitted strictly according to the given guidelines of a particular periodical.

Reviewers should accept the MS only if they can review more or less within the stipulated time. 

Contributors should swiftly respond to reviewers' comments. They should return the proofs as early as possible.

I feel that small MSS can be published quickly in this way.

With best wishes,

Subir.

Nice discussion.

The quality of a publication relies mainly on reviews of reviewers and editors. And I seriously think that it does not matter if the journals are of a high or low impact factors. This means that a good journal (high impact factor) can publish low quality papers if the review has not been done properly, and vice versa. So the role of a reviewing board is central to the quality of any publication. Now the question is who will decide what a good reviewer should look at? For this I think we need a standard procedure to map the need of a journal for a paper to be published. For example we cannot compare Nature with some journal with impact factor of 1 or 2. Although both publish science but quality matters, which is usually decided through a reviewing board.

Below are a few things that bother me as a researcher.

Who decides reviewers: editors, and if this decision is biased towards certain researchers who will check on this? It is murky there. We need a thorough examination of the entire reviewing process, I think so.

Time is very important, once a reviewer accepts an invitation he/she should finish the review very swiftly, not doing so should be treated as negative on his/her review history.

Quality of reviewers review should be thoroughly checked by the concerned editorial board for publication standard, bias etc, because some people review JUST to make their C.Vs. look fancier, and for personal gains.

Check on editors, and chief-editors is one of the key components of quality publications.

There are many example where editors were directly involved in publication fraud, bias, personal gains, thus this needs to be checked, and serious actions taken.

Reward for reviewing is good, but this may lead to competition, and could jeopardize the quality of publications. But if done with utmost caution this will be a very good exercise. And why not, people spend so much time in reviewing, they should be awarded.

Shah's discussion of the quality of peer-reviewing process is really deep and concise. My point, however, is related to both quality and speed of the process. Nowadays, everything related to publishing a paper (running experiment, processing data, creating figures, writing text, organizing references, getting related previous studies) is much faster, easier and of better quality than it used to be 2 decades ago. The only process that is done the old way and does not benefit from advances around us is the reviewing process. Any concrete suggestions to speed up the process and increase its quality?   

I think publication process will surely speedup once reviewers are quick to review a paper. But what will motivate them to speedup is something hard to understand, and it will vary from individual to individual. Until now it was done purely on voluntary basis, but now some publishers do offer compensations. And only time will tell if this will help. But seems it might.

There are a few journals where you can instantly publish, and it remains in review for just a few month before it finally gets accepted (e.g. see this http://www.egu.eu/publications/open-access-journals/) and that is it. So in a couple of month you can publish your paper. And such journals are mostly open access, and authors have to pay for the publication, which is a new wide world to explore! Other journals may follow such a process but it will entirely depend on the managing, and editorial team of a journal to take the lead, and make publishing faster.

As an editor of a journal (www.eegs.org/jeeg), I find all of your discussions enlightening.  The most common theme here is review: who is doing the review, length of time to review, and recognition for review.  I will say that the number one issue in the length of time to get a paper to print is the review process (the second issue is revision time, and the third is lead time to print which is 3 months for JEEG).  We (editors and associate editors) pick reviewers who we know in the field that are competent and conscience of their work.  We often pick from a small subset of people that we know based on prior experience.  I see that we are overusing them and must reach a broader range of scientists, especially younger scientists, to ensure that the pool of reviewers is large.  I try to do this by engaging young scientists at conferences.

We should all see that review is part of the overall publication process, and just as we expect others to review our work, we should be willing to review theirs.  We are a community, and as such must grow our field together.  No scientist lives in a bubble.  We also should do the review in a timely manner.  Maybe 3 weeks is too fast as we all have day jobs, family constraints, holidays.  So my recommendation to you is that you have no more than 2 outstanding reviews at any one time and reject any more that come until you have finished one.  This will keep you fresh and not so anxious about looming review deadlines.  If you cannot meet the deadline of the journal’s time to review, send the editor a note and tell them that you need a couple more weeks.  They are more than accommodating to your requests.

As for recognition, I have thought about this in detail.  First, you can gain imaginary internet points at publons.com for your review (check out my profile at publons.com/a/468204/).  Second, I am going to institute a reviewer’s section on our society’s web site in hopes to provide guidance to reviewers and some recognition of reviewers.  I also plan to publish a list of reviewers in the last issue every year to give credit where credit is due.  Lastly, I am thinking of a tangible award for those reviewers that provide excellent feedback and would appreciate any input from you on what would be appropriate.

Prof. Dale Rucker thanks for your useful suggestions.

Yes, reviewers that do spend quality time in evaluation of a manuscript should be highly awarded. The review work should probably be judged by the quality of review. And not by how many pages of text have been written by a reviewer. Ideally the word file or pdf file of a paper should be annotated with comments etc. And mere English writing corrections etc, or repetition of text from paper should not be credited at all, even if such a review comes instantly.

I think a proper review board should be established, and each year a few reviewers from each journal should be selected for brilliant reviews, and later awarded. Something like a best review award. Just a certificate of appreciation will do, no need to even give money, although I would suggest that monetary benefits will be good and encouraging for reviewers.

Cheers

 Afroz