The BOU and IBIS are proud to support Peer Review Week. Each year they select a new topic, and this year it is ‘quality in peer review’.
Quality is delivered at many levels but is fundamentally about the people driving the peer review process behind a journal and the individual reviewers themselves.
Recognising the work of reviewers is integral to successful peer review. Each year we thank all our reviewers by name in IBIS and here we’d like to extend that thanks and recognise their efforts and contribution to both IBIS and the BOU.
Our IBIS reviewer community – associate editors and reviewers – numbers hundreds, annually; quite simply, all these people make a journal tick. Reviewers should feel they are part of the journals they review for. These are relationships built on trust: we trust reviewers to provide us with credible feedback on articles to publish (or not); they trust us to listen to their expertise in order to make a decision. We believe that a strong reviewer-journal relationship helps to build quality into our peer review process.
Like many research community societies, the BOU relies on volunteer contributions right across our activities. Our Council and Committees have over 50 people giving up their time to help plan and deliver activities such as conferences, grants, bursaries, social media and, of course, our journal.
Without such volunteer contributions small societies such as the BOU would not exist. Small societies provide many community functions and services that are easily taken for granted. They provide focal points for researchers to come together and support early career researchers, by helping them to develop their skills and roles within our research communities.
Our reviewer community is an integral part of our society, our journal and our peer review process, and our volunteers are the lifeblood of a member-based publishing society such as the BOU. Thank you everyone.
Find out more about Peer Review Week and the many online events they have planned throughout the week on the Peer Review Week website.
About the author
Steve Dudley, the BOU’s Chief Operations Officer has run the BOU since 1997 and, amongst other things, is responsible for social media and communications.
