How to be a Professional Peer Reviewer of Manuscripts for Medical Journals - Narative Review

Peer reviewing for the medical journals is considered as an art, a privilege, a responsibility, and a service to the profession. Peer reviewing requires skill, commitment and takes time. Novice reviewers may be interested in peer reviewing, but they might lack sufficient knowledge of the role of a peer reviewer and skills required to carry out a comprehensive and fair peer review. The aim of this narrative review is help novice reviewers prepare for peer reviewing and offers suggestions for improving their confidence and skills in the role of reviewer.
In current narrative review, we used published papers in the field of peer reviewing as well as our personal experiences of the peer reviewing for medical journals. In addition, one of the authors has been teaching several peer reviewing workshops in different universities.
We incorporated all of the demonstrated peer reviewing methods and offer a series of simple strategies that healthcare professors can use to provide high quality peer reviewing.
Although the acquisition and development of peer reviewing skills of medical literature is the result of continuous training and experience, the described strategies in this narrative review can be useful for all reviewers particularly novice reviewers that have begun their roles as reviewer and need to increase their skills in the peer reviewing.