What is peer review?

Peer review is the system used to assess the quality of a manuscript before it is published. Independent researchers in the relevant research area assess submitted manuscripts for originality, validity, and significance to help editors determine whether a manuscript should be published in their journal.

How does it work?

When a manuscript is submitted to the BVMJ journal, it is assessed to see if it meets the criteria for submission. If it does, the editorial team will select potential peer reviewers within the field of research to peer-review the manuscript and make recommendations.

Why do peer review?

Peer review is an integral part of scientific publishing that confirms the validity of the manuscript. Peer reviewers are experts who volunteer their time to help improve the manuscripts they review. By undergoing peer review, manuscripts should become:

More robust - peer reviewers may point out gaps in a paper that require more explanation or additional experiments.

Easier to read - if parts of your paper are difficult to understand, reviewers can suggest changes.

More useful - peer reviewers also consider the importance of your paper to others in your field.

Of course, in addition to offering authors advice, another important purpose of peer review is to make sure that the manuscripts published in the journal are of the correct quality for the journal’s aims.

How peer review works

Peer review used by BVMJ: Double-blind: the reviewers do not know the names of the authors, and the authors do not know who reviewed their manuscripts.

This diagram is a representation of the peer review process.