Essentials of Scientific Manuscript Review

Abstract

There are multiple reasons for a clinician to consider serving as a manuscript reviewer, including improving their clinical knowledge and research skills, becoming a better writer, and making contributions to advancing scientific knowledge. Reviewers for the Arthroscopy family of journals can find essential tools on the journal websites, including a Journal Course for Writers and Reviewers: Checklists and Templates for Original Scientific Articles, Checklists and Templates for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses, and a Research Pearls Collection. Arthroscopy reviewers provide journal editors with Confidential Comments, on which the editors heavily rely, summarizing study strengths and limitations as well as rationale supporting the reviewer’s recommendation as to whether the submission is recommended for publication. In addition, reviewers provide Comments to Authors suggesting opportunities to improve the research whether or not the article is recommended for publication; the goal is to provide helpful feedback. Key areas of reviewer focus are reproducible methods (like a cookbook), clinical (rather than statistical) significance, illustrative and well-labeled figures, and detailed figure legends. Most of all, reviewers must ensure that the conclusion of a study is based entirely on the study results and thus whether or not the study hypothesis is or is not supported by the results. Crucially, reviewers must ensure that authors resist the common temptation to state conclusions that go beyond or overreach the study results.