In 2023, ALES reviewers continue to make outstanding contributions to the peer review process. They demonstrated professional effort and enthusiasm in their reviews and provided comments that genuinely help the authors to enhance their work.
Hereby, we would like to highlight some of our outstanding reviewers, with a brief interview of their thoughts and insights as a reviewer. Allow us to express our heartfelt gratitude for their tremendous effort and valuable contributions to the scientific process.
September, 2023
Maximilian Berlet, Technical University of Munich, Germany
November, 2023
Lea Lowenfeld, New York-Presbyterian / Weill Cornell Medical Center, USA
December, 2023
Chia Yew Kong, University of Glasgow, Scotland
September, 2023
Maximilian Berlet
Dr. Maximilian Berlet serves at the department of Surgery at the University Hospital Klinikum rechts der Isar of the Technical University of Munich. His research areas include robotics in medicine, telehealth, artificial intelligence in surgery, and model-based medicine. Learn more about him here.
In Dr. Berlet’s opinion, peer review is one of the most fundamental institutions in science. It guarantees a comprehensive evaluation of the results presented in a scientific article or thesis. The reviewer plays the role of a guardian, preventing the specific scientific field from unintentional or even deliberate faulty conclusions. On the other hand, he thinks that the author benefits from a critical but benevolent evaluation to complement an article with aspects that would not have been taken into account without the stimulating advice of the reviewer. Thus, both the scientific field and the authors profit from peer review.
Dr. Berlet reckons that peer-reviewing in their specific field of science is the duty of every scientist. Reviewers should never forget that they expect a critical but constructive analysis of their own work conversely and transfer this expectation to the review process. Hence, the purpose is not to prevent supposed competitors from publishing their results but to serve the scientific progress in the field. Even the non-recommendation of acceptance can be a worthy contribution and stimulate the authors of a rejected article to rethink their approach. Therefore, reviewers must always emphasize what fundamental shortcomings lead to their decision. Any research effort is worth discussing, as progress often requires several tries before achieving success.
Though peer reviewing is anonymous, Dr. Berlet believes that peer reviewing is mandatory to foster high-quality science and avoid hasty or inconsiderate publications. An article can influence its scientific field in both directions. It can lead to improvement if its approach and the derived conclusions are of good quality. On the other hand, it can damage the field by introducing low-quality methodology or faulty conclusions. Especially in medical research, this is a genuine peril as it concerns patients' integrity.
(By Lareina Lim, Brad Li)
November, 2023
Lea Lowenfeld
Dr Lea Lowenfeld, MD, is an Assistant Professor of Surgery in the Division of Colon and Rectal Surgery at New York-Presbyterian / Weill Cornell Medical Center. She is Associate Program Director of the General Surgery Residency and Course Director of the Sub-Internship. She received her BA in Philosophy from Cornell University and her medical degree from the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. She completed her general surgery training at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, spending two years as a post-doctoral research fellow studying cancer immunotherapy. After completing her general surgery residency, she completed fellowship training in Colon and Rectal Surgery at the University of Southern California. Her research interests involve new technologies in colorectal surgery, inflammatory bowel diseases, and surgical education. Learn more about her here.
Dr. Lowenfeld reckons that the journal review system benefits from review of articles by diverse panel of reviewers with expertise in the field and an interest in furthering the general body of knowledge. Reviewers should come from a diverse background in order to engage the broader scientific community. Reviewers may be experts in the field and should be committed to performing the necessary background reading to appropriately evaluate the article. At its best, both the authors and reviewers should benefit from the review process to build on their knowledge and to contribute to the field.
Reviewers should keep in mind that the goal of the review process is to improve the scientific understanding of the field, according to Dr. Lowenfeld. Comments should be used to improve the content of the paper as well as the presentation of the content to make it broadly relevant and accessible and further the overall knowledge in the field. They should minimize their own biases, maintain the confidentiality of the article, and provide a prompt response.
“Acting as a reviewer not only allows you to read articles that introduce innovations in the field, but it also allows you to read the comments of other reviewers. These can both improve your own skills as both a researcher/author and reviewer,” says Dr. Lowenfeld.
(by Lareina Lim, Brad Li)
December, 2023
Chia Yew Kong
Dr. Chia Yew Kong is a Clinical Research Fellow and surgical resident based in the Academic Unit of Surgery, Glasgow Royal Infirmary and School of Cancer Sciences, University of Glasgow, Scotland. He is currently a PhD candidate looking at the molecular and biological features underpinning the development of local recurrence in rectal cancer using a range of orthogonal molecular characterisation techniques and bioinformatics. He also has a strong interest in surgical education, in particular surgical simulation models and has a growing portfolio of research in this arena as well. Learn more about him here.
ALES: What do you regard as a constructive/destructive review?
Dr. Kong: I think a constructive review should be detailed, specific and actionable. Guide the authors on how to correct their methodology if there is room to do this and it is feasible. Guide the authors to frame and sharpen their narrative or interpretation of the results. Authors don’t appreciate one-liners in peer review. A destructive review, on the contrary, is of course the complete opposite – One-line reviews saying the article shouldn’t be accepted simply because the reviewer regards it a ‘poor study’ or not novel enough without any further justification is truly the pinnacle of a bad review. Upon acceptance of a review task, we need to go back to the heart of why we are reviewing in the first place, to ensure that a work is as good as possible before getting released into the ‘wild’!
ALES: The burden of being a scientist/doctor is heavy. How do you allocate time to do peer review?
Dr. Kong: As an academic, we all know that having sufficient time to do everything we want to do is often an elusive goal and this is perhaps more so when you add your clinician hat to all of these. I don’t think I am by any means an expert in time management yet, but when it comes to peer review, I often universally divide it into two distinct phases. When I first receive an invite and accept it, I do a deliberate quick and brief scan through the full paper and leave it at that. In that brief scan, I am mainly condensing the paper into four things as a whole: the framing of the research question, the design of the study, the key results, and what the overall interpretation of the study this. I don’t automatically jump in and do the full review because I usually then go off and mull over it for a bit of time and think about all of these in the background. This initial phase allows me to organize my thought process about how I am going to constructively critique the paper. I then find that when you make the deep dive in writing the whole review, it seems less of an onerous task and you are able to make your review as constructive as possible for the authors.
ALES: From a reviewer’s perspective, do you think it is important for authors to follow reporting guidelines (e.g. STROBE, PRISMA and CARE) during preparation of their manuscripts?
Dr. Kong: I think this is key for a few reasons. The overarching role of these guidelines is ensuring that a study meets the minimum standards in terms of methodological quality and rigor - this of course doesn’t just apply (and shouldn’t!) to the stage when the paper is being written up but encourages authors and researchers to consult these guidelines hopefully before even the study design stage. There are numerous other important roles/ collateral benefits of these guidelines in facilitating validation of these studies by other groups and allowing them to assess reproducibility, reducing unnecessary heterogeneity, and allowing future meta-analyses.
(By Brad Li, Lareina Lim)
