I think that the peer review process is a necessary part of successful scientific writings. It ensures that the content provided for the scientific community remains high quality toward learning and subsequent research. Thus, in this blog post, I will reflect on my feelings toward criticizing other people’s works as well as how I can apply peer review toward improving my own paper.
Peer review is a delicate task. It requires attention to detail as well as an ability to see the paper as a whole. Peer review is not about nitpicking other people’s mistakes but rather providing them with suggestions on how to improve. It is a process that requires positive remarks as well as constructive criticisms. Positive remarks are useful to point out what the author is good at. Regardless of how many improvements that a paper needs, there will always be something that the author does well.
There is a fine but very thin line between constructive criticisms and personal attacks toward the author. Constructive criticisms are about pointing out mistakes that could be detrimental to the author’s paper as well as ways to improve on those mistakes. Personal attacks are statements that are not constructive nor helpful toward both the author and the reviewer. The main goal of peer review is to improve, not to attack. Thus, the peer reviewer should solely focus on improving the paper rather than trying to attack the author’s standpoint on a certain topic.
Through the process of peer review, I learn to avoid mistakes that I might make while writing my own papers. I learn to see the positive sides of a paper regardless of the improvements that it needs. Thus, even after doing so many peer reviews, I think that having a bird-eye view of my paper will help me tremendously.
