The Importance of Peer-Reviewers. How to Recognize their Merits?

Journal of Cardiovascular Surgery (BJCVS) in 2016, rewarding the good reviewers for their excellent performance is a goal set by the publication team. The reviewers are the ones who are responsible for spreading the valorization and the qualification of our scientific publications in the national and international scope. In an article published in Nature in 2014, the author expresses concern about the sustainability and quality of the peer review system, a fact proven by his own experience and his colleagues when receiving inadequate opinions, showing a lack of understanding of the content by the reviewer. The increasing number of online journals in recent decades has been contributing to reviewers’ overload. In addition to that, the editorial policy of some open access journals is to publish articles whose methodology is valid and which “has its accuracy and validity certified, regardless of the evaluation of its content.” This recommendation may sound to reviewers as a signal to approve articles only based on analysis of methods and statistics sections, without considering the reasons why it was conducted and its broader context. According to Lilian Nassi-Calò, a Scientific Electronic Library Online (SciELO) collaborator, “Peer evaluation has been going through a transition period and many believe it is necessary to redefine its principles and practices in order not to delay or impede the scientific progress. In this regard, alternatives to the traditional arbitration model have recently emerged, which is usually closed, maintaining the identity of the reviewers (single-blind system) and also the authors (double-blind system) confidential. It is interesting to point out that since 1833 closed and anonymous opinions prevailed, since it was not considered appropriate or cordial to publicly review a colleague’s work, moreover, opinions were not considered a personal expression, but represented the author’s hierarchy. There are several models to reward the reviewers, but the most cogitated one in recent times proposes the public recognition of the evaluators to give prestige to this important EDITORIAL