Peer review training and resources

In 2015, BioMed Central launched a blog series on peer review for beginners, covering issues such as how to evaluate whether you should take on a particular review, how to approach the review, and how to re-review.

BMC Medicine commissioned a series of training articles from research methodology experts to provide tips for reviewers.

The BMJ has produced a training packageof Powerpoint presentations and practice reviews.

The Canadian Institute of Health and Gender has designed this online course to help researchers and peer reviewers account for sex and gender in biomedical research in humans, animals, tissues, and cells.

The Cochrane Eyes and Vision Group CEVG@US Project and the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health collaborated on this free online course for peer reviewers. This 12-lecture series explains the basics of critical appraisal and how to translate your appraisal into a useful review.

The Committee on Publication Ethics published an updated version of their ethical guidelines for peer reviewers (PDF) in 2017, detailing peer reviewers’ responsibilities at all stages of the review process.

The Critical Appraisal Skills Programme offers checklists to guide your peer review of different study types.

The Elsevier Publishing Campus includes a collection of free online lectures and interactive courses on navigating the peer review system as both author and reviewer.

How to Survive Peer Review (PDF) by Liz Wager, Fiona Godlee, and Tom Jefferson is a freely available book published in 2012 by BMJ Books.

This book aims to explain just enough about peer review to enable you to survive and benefit from it, and to be a competent reviewer. It is designed to be a practical handbook, based on evidence and experience but not weighed down with footnotes and references. –How to Survive Peer Review, p. 1

Originally the Publons Academy, the Web of Science Academy by Clarivate offers practical peer review courses for early-career researchers to teach you the core competencies and skills needed for peer review.

Springer Nature offers a collection of peer review advice and training for peer reviewers from Nature, BioMed Central, and Springer.

Taylor & Francis offers a short guide to best practices in peer review.

VisionLearning offers a free online module on the history of peer review and how peer review works in practice, with a detailed worked example.

The CHAMP Statement and checklist and the accompanying explanation and elaboration paper have been developed for statistical peer review of medical papers.