I’m typing this on a glorious sunny Saturday; the chances are that a few of you are also working in the weekend sunshine, reviewing that manuscript for Cell, or Science, or The Journal of Virology, or perhaps even Nature Medicine.

Unlike your counterparts in other professions, however, you’ll be giving your expert advice for free. In our August editorial, we asked what motivates reviewers to spend large portions of their valuable time critiquing other people’s work. It’s a topic close to our hearts. The number of journals is increasing steadily, and scientists simply do not have the time to review every manuscript they are asked to look at.

What makes you decide which papers to review, and for which journals? Which factors are paramount; is it purely the potential importance of the paper that grabs your interest, its relevance to your specific area of research, or does the journal itself weigh into your decision? And if the latter, what are the factors that make you review for particular journals?

Are there any steps that we can take to encourage you to review for us? At Nature Medicine we recently started sending feedback to our reviewers (the other reviewer reports plus an indication of our decision). Are there any other incentives that might predispose you towards one journal or another?

As we discussed in our editorial, good reviewers for our journal know what is required of a Nature Medicine paper. They are fair, objective and can judge the suitability of an advance for a broad vs. specialised readership. We are lucky to have a large pool of trusted experts upon whom we rely. But we are keen to involve less established principal investigators in the reviewing process. This can benefit both sides; the journal gains exposure to the diversity of ideas in a particular field, and the newer investigators, by receiving reviewer feedback, can gauge what their community expects of a paper in a high-profile journal. So please do recommend your colleagues if you must decline a request to review.

On a closely related topic, good reviewers don’t materialize automatically. Can we as a journal participate in the training process? And if so how? Please do comment and tell us your thoughts.

And now that I’ve finished this, I’m off to get an ice-cream. I hope that you too have nearly finished with that paper you’re reviewing and you can get out and enjoy the sunshine while it lasts…

Uploaded on behalf of Clare Thomas, Senior Editor, Nature Medicine