The process of a peer review is an important step for scientific articles as it validates the credibility of the research being cited, as well as the information being provided. This process helps the author to understand and analyze where information may be misconstrued, misunderstood, or misinterpreted by its audience before the final publication. Thus, the peer-reviewer must be someone with the same or a higher-level of expertise than that of the author. This peer-review process should also be done by more than one reviewer to increase validity.
There are many pros to peer-reviewing which include valuable feedback from reviewers. It can be difficult to self-review and edit your own paper because rereading your own paper makes it difficult to catch errors or mistakes. Thus, peer reviewing provides a fresh set of eyes to catch these. This also helps authors to make sure they have the most up to date research.
However, the peer review process can have some disadvantages, as well. For example, this increases the time required to publish articles due to extended time reviewing and editing after review. In smaller fields of work with less experts, it can be hard to also have a variety of peers to review and validate work. Finally, reviewers who share the same opinions of the authors can make it difficult to see through biased opinions which may need more evidence for its audience.
