In 2024, JGO 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.

January, 2024
Sven Hans Petersen, National University of Singapore, Singapore

March, 2024
Jayson L Parker, University of Toronto, Canada

April, 2024
Isamu Makino, Kanazawa University, Japan

May, 2024
Nazim Bhimani, Royal North Shore Hospital, Australia

January, 2024

Sven Hans Petersen

Sven Hans Petersen earned his MSc in Biology from the Technical University of Braunschweig before pursuing his Ph.D. studies at the University of Birmingham, UK. In 2011, he relocated to Stockholm, Sweden, to embark on his postdoctoral position at the Karolinska Institute, focusing on primary immunodeficiency diseases. Subsequently, in 2013, he accompanied his spouse to Malaysia and later moved to Singapore, where he commenced his work at the National University of Singapore (NUS), specializing in immunotherapeutic targets for gastric cancer. In 2016, Dr. Petersen had a four-year stint in the industry, gaining valuable experience in the development of T cell therapies for solid tumors. By 2020, he had become an integral part of Duke-NUS' Laboratory for Translational and Molecular Imaging, Singapore, contributing to the advancement of the program in reporter gene imaging of cellular therapeutics. His focus extended to immune cells and stem cells for cancer therapy, marking a pivotal stage in his career journey. Connect with him on LinkedIn.

In Dr. Petersen’s opinion, peer review is a critical component in the process of publishing scientific findings. Serving as a quality control mechanism, peer review ensures rigorous quality assurance. Reviewers assess the methodology, data analysis, and interpretation of results to verify the accuracy and reliability of the research. The scientific community can validate the authenticity and significance of the findings. Additionally, he thinks that reviewers provide constructive feedback, identifying potential flaws, or areas for improvement in the research. This feedback helps authors refine their work and enhance the overall quality of the scientific literature. Overall, this process helps prevent the dissemination of inaccurate or unsubstantiated information. For the same reasons, for journals, peer review is a valuable and inexpensive method to determine whether a manuscript is suitable for publication. Therefore, published research that has undergone rigorous peer review is generally considered more credible. Peer review itself, however, is not infallible. He indicates that the process of peer review relies on voluntary contribution of peer scientists who are not involved in the reviewed work and get little benefit from investing a substantial amount of time for a rigorous review. Furthermore, the peer reviewer preferably has to be a specialist of the field and therefore is prone to bias when it comes to new data conflicting with their own scientific view. That being said, further efforts are necessary to make peer review less dependent on human bias and preferably also less time consuming for the reviewer. To him, integrating AI into the process of peer review might hold some promise for the future.

While reviewing, according to Dr. Petersen, ideally, an objective review should be an honest evaluation of a third party’s scientific work not being affected by any personal opinion on the particular subject of research or the person having conducted the research. It is important to acknowledge that no human being is completely free from bias and therefore, proactively counteracting one’s own bias is crucially important. Dr. Petersen always tries to remain objective by reading a manuscript as neutral as possible. He repeatedly reminds himself to be constructively critical aiming to serve science, and not himself or his ego.

“Investing a substantial amount of time to review someone else’s work and not expecting any scientific acknowledgement or monetary compensation is one of the cornerstones of the scientific review process. The scientific community and journals rely on our scientific integrity and idealism to conduct this work as a token of honor so we can expect others to do the same for us. We all depend on this at least as long as it requires AI to do this job for us,” says Dr. Petersen.

(by Lareina Lim, Brad Li)

March, 2024

Jayson L Parker

Dr. Jayson L Parker’s prior research experience has been in medical imaging for Alzheimer’s disease, cocaine addiction and neural plasticity. He is a neuroscientist who worked in investment banking as a biotechnology analyst, followed by a move into the pharmaceutical industry. Today, he works in the department of Biology at the University of Toronto Mississauga and cross appointed to biomedical engineering. His research activity is in several areas: medical device/software regulation, clinical trial failure rates, large language models in clinical decision making and digital health. Learn more about him here.

The way Dr. Parker sees it, we forget sometimes that science has two pillars: hypothesis testing and peer review. The former will not operate very well without the latter. He thinks that without peer review, it places a tremendous burden on the scientific community as it will take far more time to identify articles that are credible, before we even get into issues of experimental design and data analysis.

In reviewing a paper, Dr. Parker always spends most of his time looking at figures to see if he arrives at the same conclusions as the authors. After reviewing the figures, he reads the results and methodology. The last sections he reads are the introduction and discussion. This keeps him focused on the data before getting into discussions about the implications of the findings. Ironically, the main bias to contend with in his case would be confirmation bias. In other words, a tendency for him to see what the authors tell him to see in their data. This bias favors authors but it is not a service to the scientific process. In view of this, he manages confirmation bias by using the critical review process he describes above.

“Peer review of course is almost entirely invisible and thankless activity. Everyone is busy, so it can be difficult at best to set aside the time. As citizens of the community of science, we maintain our profession by taking the time to review the work of others. Reviewers are crucial. There are many rumors now, even for high-ranked journals, how difficult it is for them to find qualified reviewers. The efforts of reviewers are more important than ever,” says Dr. Parker.

(by Lareina Lim, Brad Li)

April, 2024

Isamu Makino

Isamu Makino works at the Department of Hepato-Biliary-Pancreatic Surgery and Transplantation, Kanazawa University, Japan. His research area covers surgical treatment for pancreato-biliary malignancy. Recent projects focus on establishing treatment for locally advanced pancreatic cancer.

In Dr. Makino’s opinion, it is extremely important for scientific papers to be evaluated objectively by peer review. Checking only by a researcher alone or by one's own research organization may result in biased understanding of events and interpretation of results, and may lead to the dissemination of incorrect information, either artificially or unintentionally. In the peer-review process, he carefully evaluates whether the submitted paper correctly recognizes the events and rationally interprets the results based on the scientific background. He also places particular emphasis on whether the findings are meaningful when widely published.

“I usually do the peer review during my on-call time in my clinical practice. I read a manuscript at least three times, spending about 5-10 hours or sometimes more in total per one peer review,” says Dr. Makino. He indicates that the role of peer review is not only to evaluate submitted papers and suggest improvements, but also to organize the reviewers' knowledge and understanding. Since it is not an easy task to explain the problems of a submitted manuscript based on the scientific background and to logically propose the revisions, he tries to take enough time for the peer-review process. Therefore, he is careful to undertake peer review only for papers that have the potential to be contributed adequately by his peer review.

(by Lareina Lim, Brad Li)

May, 2024

Nazim Bhimani

Nazim Bhimani is a biostatistician with a passion for medical research. Professionally, he works as a Biostatistician and Data Manager for the Gastrointestinal Department at Royal North Shore Hospital, Sydney, Australia and is a Lecturer in Surgical Education at the University of Sydney. He is undertaking a part-time PhD in Medicine from the University of Sydney. He has previously completed a Master of Biostatistics, Bachelor of Science (Honors) and Bachelor of Science (Advanced Science) with a key program in Mathematical Science. In his spare time, Nazim is heavily involved in volunteering; he has a formal appointment as the Honorary Secretary on the Aga Khan Youth & Sports Board and has previously served as a board member for four years on the Aga Khan Education Board for Australia and New Zealand.

According to Nazim, the peer-review system, a cornerstone of academic publishing, indeed has several limitations that can affect the quality and integrity of published research. The complexity and multidisciplinary nature of modern research highlights one significant issue. He lists the limitations of the peer-review system, including complexity of modern research, inadequate specialised review, variability in review quality, reviewers’ biases and conflicts of interest (COIs), time-consuming process and lack of transparency. He proposes some potential improvements accordingly:

1. Expanding Reviewer Pools and Expertise:
• Specialist Reviewers: Journals should strive to include reviewers with specific expertise relevant to different components of a manuscript. This might involve creating a database of specialists who can be called upon as needed.
• Collaborative Reviews: Encourage collaborative reviews where multiple reviewers with different areas of expertise evaluate a manuscript collectively.
2. Training and Standardization:
• Reviewer Training Programs: Implement formal training programs for reviewers to improve the quality and consistency of reviews. This can include training on statistical methods, systematic reviews, and meta-analyses.
• Standardised Review Criteria: Develop and enforce standardised review criteria to ensure more consistent and objective evaluations.
3. Reducing Bias and Managing COIs:
• Double-Blind Review: Implement double-blind review processes where both the reviewers and the authors are anonymised to reduce bias.
• COI Declarations: Require reviewers to declare any potential COIs and establish guidelines for managing these conflicts.
4. Improving Efficiency and Reducing Reviewer Burden:
• Automated Tools: Use automated tools and software to assist with preliminary checks, such as plagiarism detection and basic statistical validation.
• Incentives for Reviewers: Provide incentives for reviewers, such as recognition, access to journal resources, or financial compensation, to encourage timely and thorough reviews.
5. Increasing Transparency:
• Open Peer Review: Consider adopting open peer-review models where reviewer comments and author responses are published alongside the manuscript. This can increase transparency and accountability.
• Post-Publication Peer Review: Encourage post-publication peer review to allow ongoing evaluation and discussion of published work, potentially correcting errors that were missed during the initial review process.

In Nazim’s opinion, reviewers play a crucial role in maintaining the integrity and quality of academic research. While reviewing papers, they need to keep several key principles and practices in mind to ensure their reviews are thorough, fair, and constructive. Reviewers should bear in mind to keep the confidentiality of the review process, highlight both the strengths and weaknesses of the manuscript, complete the review within the agreed-upon time frame, assess the clarity, coherence, and organisation of the manuscript, etc. “By keeping these principles and practices in mind, reviewers can provide valuable feedback that enhances the quality of published research and supports the integrity of the scientific literature,” says he.

(By Lareina Lim, Brad Li)