An author's views on the importance of constructive peer review for improving their work podcast

In this episode of the Emerald Publishing podcast, Commissioning Editor Daniel Ridge, discusses the peer review process from an author’s perspective with Dr. Richard Bathurst, a professor emeritus of civil engineering at the Royal Military College of Canada. Dr. Bathurst, who has extensive experience as an author, reviewer, and editor, shares his insights on what makes a good peer review.
Amongst other topics the episode covers: Initial appraisal; constructive feedback; technical content; clarity and specificity; global perspective and attitude towards receiving feedback.

Dr. Bathurst’s experience highlights the importance of a respectful and constructive peer review process that helps authors improve their work while maintaining a constructive and supportive tone.

Speaker profile(s)

dr-r-bathurstDr Richard Bathurst (BSc., MSc., PhD) is Professor Emeritus of Civil Engineering at the Royal Military College of Canada where he has taught since 1980. He also holds a cross-appointment with the Civil Engineering Department at Queen's University. Dr Bathurst is the Editor-in-Chief for the IGS Journal, Geosynthetics International. He has authored or co-authored more than 220 papers in refereed journals, 20 book chapters and more than 250 contributions in conference proceedings.

Find Dr Richard Bathurst via LinkedIn.

Podcast Host

Daniel-Ridge

Daniel Ridge, PhD, is a Books Commissioning Editor at Emerald Publishing and the DEI lead for the book's program. He works with authors across the social sciences and business fields with the goal of promoting underrepresented voices and scholarship. He is also the producer of the podcast series and enjoys speaking to authors and editors across the disciplinary spectrum.

In this episode:

  • What aspects of the peer review comments does an author find helpful?
  • How does your experience as an author influence how you review?
  • What would you advise international authors working with one another in the review process?
  • What is your approach to receiving feedback?
  • How should an author manage their relationship with the editor?

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Transcript

An author's views on the importance of constructive peer review for improving their work


Daniel Ridge (DR): Welcome to the Emerald publishing podcast, three part mini-series on the peer review process. My name is Daniel Ridge, and I'm a commissioning editor at Emerald publishing. In this episode, we are looking at the peer review process through the author's perspective to discuss this. I'm joined by Dr Richard Bathurst, who is professor emeritus of civil engineering at the Royal Military College of Canada, where he has taught since 1980. He also holds a cross appointment with the Civil Engineering Department at Queen's University, also in Canada. Dr Bathurst is the editor in chief of the IGs journal Geosynthetics International, and has been working with the journal for 30 years. He has authored or co- authored more than 220 papers in refereed journals, 20 book chapters and more than 250 contributions in conference proceedings. 

I began my conversation with Dr Bathurst by asking what aspects of a review he finds most useful once he receives reviewer comments. So great, thank you so much, Richard for joining us. I'm curious, we're discussing this from an author's perspective. So, when you receive your paper back from peer review, what aspects of the review do you find most valuable? Are you looking for feedback on the development of your ideas, or do you prefer practical suggestions?

Richard Bathurst (RB): I look for both. But initially, what I like to see in a good review, is an initial overall appraisal of the paper, you know, before actually getting into the detailed technical comments, what's really important for an author, including me, is, what does the reviewer think about the originality and the impact of the paper. And if these need to be strengthened, then I like to see this communicated to the author along similar lines. If the reviewer believes that the paper should be declined, you know, there have, there have to be clear reasons why. Of course, it's important that that the reviewer be polite and professional. And one thing that I find often that's missing from a review is that if there are good points in the paper, I believe that the reviewer should be generous and recognise these points because, you know, authors have worked very hard, and they like to be recognised for those points that are made in the paper. Other things that I look for, is if the authors have missed important, related published work, then the reviewer should identify what these works are and give them enough information that they can find these papers. I really appreciate that when I have missed some important work, although I must admit that today, you know, with Google Scholar, you know, it's very easy to find all published works, but sometimes it's a little bit more difficult to determine which works are seminal and important from those works that are less so.

DR: So, what sort of criteria do you believe Reviewers should focus on to provide the most helpful feedback for you as an author

RB: As I mentioned, I like to see an overall appraisal of the paper, and then what I like to see are a carefully numbered list of comments that are clearly linked to different locations in the paper, and this is important to the author, because that helps the author to understand the reviewers concerns, if any, and be able to, you know, pointedly, respond to each one of those concerns. So that's why it's important to number the comments. I like to see, you know, after some general comments have been made on the paper, I like to see the technical issues being identified point by point.

DR: Do you review papers yourself? So how does your experience as an author influence how you review?

RB: Well, the things that I've mentioned that I look for in a review influences how I respond as an author to review comments, if that's what you mean. You know, there's an exchange between authors and reviewers that is very important, particularly if the reviewers are doing a good job. I think other things that I look for is it's very important for the reviewer to identify those technical issues that are most important, and if not resolved, can lead to the paper not being accepted, as opposed to issues that deserve clarification but are not fatal to paper acceptance, because you want the authors to apply effort to those parts of the paper that deserve it. Other things, again, from experience, as an author, reviewer and an editor, is some reviewers think that their responsibility, if you like, is to provide an editing service for the authors. And I don't agree with this. I would rather that a reviewer spend time focusing on the technical content of the paper and not focusing on correcting author's grammar. It's sufficient for the reviewer to point out examples of systemic poor English and grammar that that's enough so that the author understands he's got a problem there, and the editor who's managing the review understands there's a problem. But there are professional editing services that are available to authors who are writing in English as a second language. 

DR: That is one of the questions that I wanted to ask you, in the globalised world and the globalised academic world we live in, authors are writing from very different places in the globe, and reviewing different papers from the globe. Is there something that you would advise from your overall experience of international authors working with one another in the review process?


RB: I think that a reviewer needs to be a little bit generous and appreciate that authors are often writing in a second language, English, and should be polite. But on the other hand, what I'm finding over many years is the problem of quality of English is becoming less of a concern, because what I'm finding is that authors who want to publish incredible Western English technical journals are employing professional editing services before they submit the papers. And this makes things a lot easier, because I can remember there was a time it, and it does happen occasionally, in my world as an editor, that a paper will be declined at receipt because the English is so poor. And like I said, there really is no excuse for this now.

DR: So then talking about your general attitude, what would you say is your attitude when you receive feedback? What attitude should authors have, and what is your approach to receiving feedback? 

RB: Well, first of all, as an author, I like a critical review. I don't want to see a review that's nasty, but I want to come away from that review knowing that that reviewer put some thought into their comments and clearly read the paper. I've been lucky in some cases that authors have come back and said, you know, the paper is well written, and I really don't have anything to say. Well, that makes me feel good for a little while, but it's of no value to me. There's no such thing as a perfect paper. And going back to an earlier comment, if a reviewer generally thinks that about a paper, they should write a few comments about what were the good parts of the paper, what was the part that I liked, what was the part that I put a check mark, so to speak, on the paper, because it was a very good point. So, that's what I like. You know, if I have missed an important prior work that's related to what I've done, then I really do appreciate that.

DR: Do you find authors ever becoming defensive of their work?

RB: Yes. I mean, some do. There are some really established authors that sometimes are very pompous. I've had authors come back and say, listen, I won this gold medal, you know, and so I know what I'm talking about, etc. There's a few people like that still, yeah. But it's pretty rare. Interestingly, one thing that I often see, which is unnecessary, is that some authors are over gratuitous in their thanking of the reviewers. Every reviewer comment, they will start with, we thank the reviewer for this comment. This is really unnecessary, and it's what the author can do is in their response, they can just put a line somewhere saying, you know, these review comments were very useful, and we have used them to, you know, to improve the value of the paper this type of thing.

DR: Yeah, well, what if an author genuinely disagrees with the reviewers comments?

RB: That's a good question, and what they need to do is to make a clear statement. Why? And most editors who are managing papers will make that comment, if you do not agree with a reviewer, comment clearly state why, rather than saying we don't agree.

DR: And when it comes to the nuts and bolts, what practical advice do you give when it comes to answering feedback and incorporating it into your paper?

RB: What I expect and often ask authors, and I do it myself, is I clearly link my responses to the comments, which hopefully have been numbered. If they haven't been numbered, I'll number them, and then what I do in the revised Track Changes paper, I will use comment balloons. And in the comment balloon, I'll write reviewer one comment X, and highlight the location in the text where my response to the reviewer comment is located. This makes it so much easier for reviewer and authors need to understand that a happy reviewer is the first step to having a paper accepted.

DR: Well, I mean, it really is a relationship, isn't it? You have the reviewer, you have the author, and then you have the editor of the journal or the book series itself.

RB: That's right, and I think sometimes authors and reviewers don't understand that the editor is going to look at all of the reviewer comments. He's going to look, or he or she is going to look. at all of the responses and get a big picture appreciation of the paper before making the decision. If a particular reviewer says, I don't think this paper should be published, that reviewer doesn't have the final say, the editor who is adjudicating this paper is going to take into consideration all of the reviewer comments and a whole bunch of other stuff as well that may not always be obvious to the reviewer or the author. I mean, maybe the paper is over length, maybe the quality of the figures themselves are not acceptable. So, all of these things are part of the decision process on whether a paper is accepted, declined, moves forward or whatever. 

DR: Are there any recommendations you'd give an author in terms of the relationship with the editor? 

RB: Well, clearly there must not be a conflict, but a good editor will make sure that doesn't happen. But I think that the author should also be respectful of the editor themselves, you know. So don't get into a conflict in writing, with the editor, disagreeing with the editor, etc. Most editors are on are on the side of of authors. So avoid conflict.

DR: And avoid that over flowery talk. Yes, be polite and professional. Great. Thank you so much for your time. I really appreciate your comments on the author experience.

RB: Well, thank you. Thank you very much for giving me this opportunity. 

DR: Thank you for listening to today's episode. For more information about the peer review process and to listen to other episodes in our peer review miniseries, please visit our website by searching emerald publishing podcast series peer review I'd like to thank my guests for joining me today and the studio.