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Family Practice Vol. 20, No. 5, 501-502
© Oxford University Press 2003

Editorial

Family Practice—what makes a good review?

Roger Jones

Guy’s King’s & St Thomas’ School of Medicine, London, UK; E-mail: roger.jones@kcl.ac.uk

Jones R. Family Practice—what makes a good review? Family Practice 2003; 20: 501–502.

The first 10% of the full text of this article appears below.

Background

Reviews and reviewers are an essential part of the publishing process. Despite well-described drawbacks, peer review remains a cornerstone of the evaluation, revision and selection of papers for publication. Reviewers’ comments are an important part of editorial decision making.

Reviews are of widely variable quality and utility. This variation has been subject to a good deal of research, and some of the characteristics of good reviewers are beginning to emerge, as well as strategies, particularly feedback and training, which are successful in improving the quality and usefulness of peer reviews. One important factor is, of course, the clarity of instructions given by editors and their journals to reviewers. Many journals have approached this by using structured pro-formas, and encouraging on-line reviewing. My own experience of this is that the process can feel restrictive and reductionist, and tends to encourage convergent and introspective thinking . . . [Full Text of this Article]

The editorial process

Good and bad reviews


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