Peer Review

When a paper is submitted by author(s) to an academic journal for publication, the journal's editor first sends it to several peer reviewers for review. These reviewers are typically experts and respected researchers in the same field of research as the author.

The peer reviewers carefully read the paper and check the following:

• the researchers’ methods are logical, detailed and replicable,
• there are no errors,
• the authors' conclusions follow the research results, and
• they note the existence of bias or other flaws.

Each peer reviewer comments on the paper and provides recommendations to accept or reject it.

The journal editor coordinates the peer review process and assesses all reviews. They then make the ultimate decision whether to accept the paper for publication, request rewrites or reject it.

Stepping you through the process

This infographic provides a visual summary of the peer review process. Click the plus (+) symbols in the image to reveal more detail about each step.