The importance of peer review

The Importance of Peer ReviewThe importance of peer review of manuscripts, research applications, and other materials relevant to our profession cannot be overestimated.The review process helps insure quality and accuracy of knowledge generated and disseminated in our profession.The peer review of applications for the research funding and development in the discipline helps insure the best investment of time and dollars.Examples of these peer reviews are those conducted by many of the electronic or hard copy published journals, such as Research in Nursing & Health (RINAH), and the National Institutes of Health (NIH), American Nurses Foundation, and Sigma Theta Tau in prioritizing funding decisions. MANUSCRIPT REVIEWIn the role of Associate Editor for Research in Nursing & Health, I often have to distill and synthesize comments from numerous reviewers and provide a summary to potential authors and the senior editor.In many cases, reviewers' comments are critical of the authors' works.Those critiques are intended to improve our thinking, our science, and ultimately, to improve the quality of our scientific literature.In most instances, authors work with these comments to make useful changes, to increase clarity of manuscripts, and to move the manuscript closer to publication.However, in two cases that I experienced, the authors responded in an alternate, less constructive fashion.In the first instance, a manuscript under review addressed a methodological approach.During the peer review process, three acknowledged experts in the field reviewing the paper all came to the same independent conclusion: some of the methods in the manuscript were downright wrong.

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