To Review is to Win, Win, Win

Abstract

Providing a constructive, insightful peer review for a scholarly journal is a win–win–win activity. The authors win. The scholarship wins. The reviewers win. The authors win because a fresh, independent assessment of how the research was conducted and presented can only build their scholarly capacities. Although responding to critics is sometimes unpleasant, honest authors must admit that it typically makes them better analysts and writers, and makes their papers stronger and more influential. Scholarship wins because the creativity, analytical rigor, expositional clarity, and practical utility of a research project are enhanced when more minds focus on it. The imprimatur of peer review bestowed on articles imparts confidence that what is being read is legitimate science, not “fake news.” The reviewers win because the process helps them stay current with the latest research publications, theoretical constructs, analytical approaches, quantitative and qualitative methodologies, and substantive findings. Reviewing hones their skills through the process of evaluating manuscripts that may vary widely in their logic, analytical rigor, organization, and exposition benefits. This last dimension of winners is in danger of being overlooked. Some institutions of higher learning are pressuring their younger faculty to avoid performing peer reviews, in the misguided notion that it interferes with publishing their own work. A more enlightened approach would recognize that peer reviewing is an essential element of productive scholarship. All scholars, but especially emerging ones, and the institutions that claim to support them should see peer reviewing as exceptionally beneficial to authors, scholarship, and, yes, the reviewers themselves.