Peer-to-peer

Corie Lok, Editor of Nature Network, announces a Nature Network-hosted Q&A session with Nature editors. She, as well as some Nature and Nature journal editors (including me) have formed a Nature Network "ask the editor" group, which you are welcome to join (by clicking on this link). At the forum, Corie explains: "Hosted by the editors of Nature Network, this group/forum is for scientists who want to learn more about scientific publishing straight from the editors of Nature and the other Nature journals. Join the group and post your questions in the forum. We’ll do our best to get the right editor to answer them here."
One topic in the forum is, naturally, peer-review. Paul Wicks asks: "Do your peer-reviewers get trained? Should they? I’m conscious of the fact I receive some reviews which I perceive to be unfair because they’ve gone to a non-expert in the field. No doubt some people feel the same way about reviews I write too! Whilst there are pages and pages of guidelines for authors I don’t feel there is much guidance out there for reviewers, and as a reviewer it’s rare to get feedback on my review other than to see what the other reviewer has said."
Go to the peer-review forum to read the answer from Linda Miller, US Executive Editor of Nature and the Nature journals. And please do ask your own questions: we look forward to hearing from you and will be delighted to help.
By the way, the Nature journals' policies, advice and information about peer-review is on our author and reviewers' website.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on September 26, 2007
Categories: Mentoring and training, Peer Review Feedback | Permalink | Comments (2)

Q. Dear Nature Editors,
I am an editorial assistant for a journal published by the American Educational Research Association, which has just changed editorial teams.The current team is interested in improving the quality of the journal. Your journal was selected because of it's caliber. We are particularly interested in knowing if you have guidelines that manuscript reviewers are asked to follow. If you do have guidelines for your reviewers,we would like to request a copy.

Thank you for your time,

Editorial Assistant

A. Dear Dr Editorial Assistant

Thank you for your message. Yes, the Nature journals have reviewer guidelines and a peer-review policy. You can access all relevant information on our peer-review web page.
Please let me know if, having read this page and the associated pages, you have any more questions. These pages are public information; you are welcome to copy and redistribute them so long as you cite the source (eg the URL).

Best wishes

Maxine Clarke
Nature
www.nature.com/nature/authors/

Posted by Maxine Clarke on January 29, 2007
Categories: Peer Review Feedback | Permalink | Comments (0)

Q. I am writing to ask you about the minimal standards required by your journal concerning statistical analyses in submitted manuscripts.

I am a biostatistician. A colleague, a biomedical researcher, insists that there are no sample size requirements as long as the minimum statistical power is achieved. To be more concrete, consider a simple two-group t-test where each group is of size n=3 and the power calculations show that the power=80% (a widely accepted standard). My argument is that statistics on sample size of n=3 per group does not make much sense in terms of reliability, but my colleague insists that because the power is 80%, a manuscript will be acceptable to your journal despite the meagre sample size.

Is my colleague right or wrong? Are there any minimal standards on statistics that manuscripts submitted to your journal should satisfy, and how can one find them?

A. The Nature journals do have a statistical checklist, available on Nature's website as a one-page (44KB) Word document download. We welome volunteers from suitably qualified scientists to act as statistical referees for us. (If any such people read this posting, please drop your address details in the comments.) We also welcome suggestions for improving our checklist -- are there other elements we need to add?

Posted by Maxine Clarke on December 11, 2006
Categories: Peer Review Feedback | Permalink | Comments (0)