About this course: Peer reviewing theory and practice

This course was designed by Peoples-Praxis on behalf of the Coalition for Open Publishing of Public Health in Africa (COPPHA)as part of building capacity for innovative publishing options.

Note: if you want to gain a certificate for completing this course, you will have to create an account and log in as a student.

The quality of scientific publications has been maintained over the years by a process of peer review. Peers, usually other researchers with expertise in the area of research, examine the research report that has been submitted for publication, and make recommendations to the journal editor. It is important for researchers to take part in the peer review process and agree to requests to act as peer reviewers - it is a vital way in which research maintains high standards and scientific integrity.

This depends on the reviewers doing a good job, and part of this course offers access to various guides about how to review journal articles.

There have been many criticisms of the peer review process, and the course discusses some of these criticisms.

There are a number of new approaches to the review process as well as to the way in which research may be published. There are now ways for researchers to put their research reports online for all to access before they are reviewed, these are called preprints. Peer review is sought for these preprints in a process of open review. The author(s) can then review the paper according to the review. The paper may now be submitted for publication to a more traditional journal, and after submission will remain available for open access. This is an evolving field, and we discuss this in a later course.

Course learning outcomes. At the end of this course you should be able to:

• Understand the ways in which peer review underpins the academic publication process
• Reflect on the challenges of the peer review process
• Appreciate the characteristics of a good peer review and be able to access guidelines
• Post a good peer review using a standard format
  
• Reflect on the issues of AI in the review process

This course should be explored in combination with the Critical Appraisal and the Open Science courses which you will find elsewhere in this series of courses.

How to navigate the course

Each section comprises a set of resources that we think you will find interesting - click on the collections of resources in each section. There is a forum in each topic for reflection.

We encourage you to reflect on what you have learned or comment on the course. When you click on the hyperlink in each topic labelled reflection, you will be able to add a new topic or respond to a previous one. You may want to share your learning from this and other readings, comment on the topics from your own experience, comment on others' posts, or provide feedback on how we can improve the content and presentation.

In the final section you will see that you can gain a Certificate of Completion - the requirements for this are to access the resources, post a reflection in each section and pass the assignment.

We encourage you to reflect on the issues, maybe make notes as you go along as this is a good way to be sure that you can internalise the information presented and the lessons to learn from it.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.