Abstract
Ask any journal editor these days about the most challenging part of the job and they’ll likely say, without hesitation, “getting peer reviewers!” It’s certainly true at Health Promotion Practice (HPP), and, as with other journals, definitely more challenging than it was before COVID introduced new loss and uncertainty to our lives, re-ordered work in a seismic cultural shift, and brought into relief long overdue questions in academic and scholarly circles about service, work/life balance, and what we do with our time.
I’ll admit that, before I became HPP’s Editor in Chief, I sighed when I saw that “Invitation to Review” subject line in my email. Whether it was from HPP or any of the other journals in which I had published, I always felt too busy or too behind in my own work to shift gears and read someone else’s. When I did agree to review, I seemed to wait until the last minute—or beyond—to settle down and do it, and then only after getting a few (annoying) automated reminders and sometimes a gentle personal email from the journal staff wondering if I was going to be able to get it done and, if so, when they might expect it. I saw my scholarly work as my priority and my responsibility, separate from the work of others. Requests to review just slowed me down.
As an author, waiting for reviews to come in, it looks and feels quite different. My completed manuscript—the product of all of that disciplined writing time and co-author collaboration—is suddenly completely dependent on the time of others and the kindness of strangers. It can’t move forward without peer review, and those “peers” can’t be my friends, colleagues, or mentors, the very people most likely to agree to help. Instead, I have to wait for people I don’t know to make space in their own busy lives for me and the data, discovery, ideas I am so eager to publish.
And therein lies what I love most about managing peer review. This strange, storied, essential part of the scientific tradition requires that we care about each other. As a journal editor, I love looking for matches that will work—people who may not have met but might be intrigued by and responsive to each other based on commonality that maybe only I can see. I take seriously my responsibility to make sure that authors are reviewed by real peers—people with insight and experience with their methods, population, and topic, especially if the authors are challenging old paradigms or offering new forms of scholarly expression. Typical now across journals, it can take 20–30 invitations before three people agree, but I’m a determined matchmaker. I believe in the deep reciprocity of peer review. In the words of poet Ogden Nash, “we are so both and oneful” (Cummings, 1994).
What we give each other
I wrote in a previous commentary about the gift to authors of the peer review experience (Roe, 2021). As I process manuscript reviews and revisions, I am frequently moved by the gratitude authors express toward their reviewers. While some of that may be the expected etiquette of contemporary “revise and resubmit,” I choose to see it as recognition of the time and perspective that reviewers have shared with the authors (whether the authors agree with all of the comments or not!). More unexpected, but increasingly common, are the spontaneous notes of thanks I receive from reviewers reflecting on the gift of peer review for them. Their reasons are many—the satisfaction of giving back, the opportunity to serve the field, a chance to hone their own writing skills, a peek at the horizon—all through the manuscripts they review. These are acts of generosity. These are choices that matter.
What if we were all too busy?
Not long ago, my writing colleagues and I waited 10 months before hearing from a journal editor that he was not able to find anyone to review our manuscript. He offered a few general comments of his own but acknowledged that the topic and methods of our submission, while aligned with the journal priorities, were beyond his area of expertise. After nearly a year of waiting for a first decision, we didn’t get a peer review. The manuscript languished as we lost momentum and questioned that, if no one wanted to review our work, maybe it wasn’t the contribution we had thought it was. Disappointed over wasted time and blocked opportunity, we set the manuscript aside and moved on.
There are other, far more significant casualties when the group of willing and available reviewers constricts. As a field, we regress toward the familiar, which is always easier to manage, inadvertently favoring authors who know the language and stick to the formula. We come to rely on a smaller and smaller group of dedicated reviewers, but the matches become less precise and even those generous colleagues can only take on so many manuscripts. Practitioners and scholars from groups historically marginalized in scholarly publishing—but so welcome at HPP—may already be burdened with too many review invitations and likely not supported for this kind of service. Without a deep bench of reviewers across the spectrum of health promotion possibilities, experts in emerging methods or areas of inquiry are burdened with too many requests and may feel obligated to hold up too much of the sky, at cost to their own scholarship or peace of mind. The ones we come to rely on to accept review invitations burn out. Women end up doing far more than their share of the work. New authors, critical methodologies, new forms of expression, radical game changers may not get a chance to be published simply because they can’t get reviewed, as in our case, or they can’t get reviewed by their peers. The field persists, but stagnates, and we miss our moment.
A Site of Possibility: The HPP Approach
At HPP, we see peer review as another turn of the circle of research and practice. Every opportunity to engage the broader community of authors in dialogue about ideas, approaches, and lively possibilities—even in the strange anonymity of the peer review convention—is an investment in the vitality of health promotion practice.
We strive to manage peer review with profound respect, recognizing that while some manuscripts are the result of well-resourced research settings and expert mentoring, the submission before us needing three peer experts may be the first manuscript for that author, or the first public account of a community’s previously private discourse or story of change. We send invitations to reviewers who we think will enjoy the experience of reviewing a particular manuscript, counting on them to be clear, specific, and always respectful in their critique. We seek to demystify the process for reviewers by providing very specific guidance and the opportunity to speak directly, albeit anonymously, to authors through our tailored reviewer forms. We proactively grow our network so that reviewers are not overburdened and maybe even look forward to an HPP review invitation (OK, maybe that’s just an editor’s dream). We welcome reviewers to “the HPP Elites”—a group of exceptional peer coaches who have demonstrated the ability to invest in authors and commit to three to four reviews per year. Rather than mind-numbing administrivia (which it can certainly seem at times), we choose to see matching manuscripts and reviewers as a site of possibility, an art, a responsibility, and most of all, an investment in the relevance of our scholarship.
Taking it to the next level
With nearly 700 new submissions in 2021 and hundreds more in various stages of review, efficient, robust, and principled peer review is central to what we do at HPP. If you would like to take your own involvement to the next level, we welcome your participation. Here are some ideas:
If you are submitting a manuscript to HPP, there are things you can do as well to support the integrity of peer review.
Peer-reviewed science requires peers, reviewers, the wisdom of experience, and the breakthrough vision of fresh perspectives. The integrity and relevance of our science depends on all of us. We are truly in this together; in this space, we are nothing without each other.
With gratitude to all the reviewers,
we are so both and oneful
night cannot be so sky
sky cannot be so sunful
i am through you so i
e.e. cummings
