A Review on the Editorial Peer Review

Background and Objectives: The editorial peer review has an important role in the publication of scientific articles. Peers or reviewers are those scholars who have the expertise regarding the topic of a given article. They critically appraise the articles without having any monetary incentives or conflicts of interest. The aim of this study was to determine the most important aspects of the editorial peer review. Materials and Methods: The Pubmed search engine (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed) and the Scientific Information Database search engine (http://www.sid.ir/fa/index.asp) were applied using "Editorial Peer Review" as the keywords. In the next step, by altering the search strategy and also using the reference lists of the retrieved papers, the most up-to-date references for this review study were retrieved. Discussion: Based on the retrieved articles, at first the definition and the different methods of the editorial peer review are discussed. Then the usual biases within the editorial peer review process are explained. At the end of the article, various responsibilities of the peers are referred to. Conclusion: Reviewing the scientific articles is an ethical responsibility of the scientists, and should be considered by them as an honor rather than as an extra burden. When accepting a review, scientists should carry out the task based on the highest feasible standards. They should not only help the editor-in-chief to take the best possible decision about the article, but also assist the authors in raising the quality of their articles. Key words: Journal, Editorial peer review, Editor-in-chief   Funding: This study did not have any sources of funding. Conflict of interest: The author is the editor-in-chief of the Scientific Journal of Rafsanjan University of Medical Sciences