publications

Science outreach: plain-language summaries for all research papers

/ Chris Buddle / 55 Comments

1) Scientists do really interesting things.

2) Scientists have a responsibility to disseminate their results.

3) Scientists do not publish in an accessible format.

This is a really, really big problem.

Scientific research is largely funded by public money, and it can be argued that scientists have a responsibility to make their work accessible to the public (and scientists are particularly well suited for outreach activities!).  The main platform for disseminating research results is the peer-reviewed journal paper and this is not ideal.  Let’s be honest – these kinds of publications are often very specialized, full of jargon, and unreadable to most (even other scientists).  Many papers are also behind pay-walls, making them even less accessible to people outside of certain institutions.

Earlier this week I attended a scientific conference (the annual meeting of the Entomological Society of Canada) and as part of this conference I was invited to speak in a symposium that was about social media in science.  It was a great session and some of my favourite social media mentors were also speaking at the symposium, including Adrian Thysse, macromite, the Bug Geek, and Biodiversity in Focus.   As I was preparing that talk the week before, I was also madly finishing a grant application, and in that application I was require to write a plain-language summary of my proposed research.  The granting agency uses this ‘summary for public release’ as a way to communicate research to the public.  Taxpayers fund the research and they might want to know where their money is going; the granting agency has found one way to communicate this information in a clever and effective manner.

…………………………..Eureka!

Here is the proposal:  Every scientific paper published in a peer-reviewed journal must be accompanied by a short, plain-language summary of the work.

This summary would be placed on-line, free for everyone to read.  It would be concise, clear, free of jargon, and highlight why the work was done, how it was done, and what was discovered.

Here are some examples of how these plain-language summaries could be used:

1. Media: Media offices at Universities are constantly interested in promoting fantastic work by their Professors.  This work, however, is often not accessible and it can be a lengthy process to put together a press release (how easy is it to track down a researcher?).  A plain-language summary written by the researcher would be readable, clear, accessible, and an easy way to start the process of promoting research activities occurring at Universities.

2. Blogging: I am a regular blogger, and always happy to promote the research occurring within my laboratory, the laboratories of colleagues, or just discussing interesting scientific papers that I have read.  If I had plain-language summaries to access, it would make the process that much easier, and help facilitate timely communication with the public about recently published work.  Other science bloggers could also pick up on these summaries for their own writing.

3. Publishers & Editors:  As an editor-in-chief for a scientific journal, I sometimes look for ways to promote great papers, and promote the journal to a larger audience.  If I was able to peruse the summaries for public release,  this would make the process much easier.  Publishers could also take text from these summaries, put together a press release or blog post, and also promote research results from their journals based on particularly interesting papers and findings.

4. For Everyone: In my experience, people outside my area of expertise are always keen to hear about research activities.    It’s sometimes a challenge for me to explain my research results, and if I was always doing plain-language summaries, this would get easier.    The audience for research results can be as big as you can imagine: high school students, friends, family, colleagues, Departmental chairs, graduate students, journalists, libraries, etc…  Finally,  the Bug Geek has a great post about the challenges of talking science to 10-year olds:  it is hard to do, but important.  We need practice.  These summaries will help.

The procedure for getting plain language summaries could be quite simple.  When an author submits the final revisions on a scientific publication, they would be required to write a short plain-language summary.  I would like to think that publishers would be willing to incorporate this (simple) step into the on-line systems for manuscript processing, and be willing to post these, as open-access, on their websites, possibly paired with Abstracts.   These summaries would not diminish the value of the actual peer-reviewed papers – it would probably help increase readership since these summaries would help people find the work they are actually looking for, and give them a doorway into the scientific literature.

Let’s make this happen.  

It will be an effective way to do science outreach.

 Please comment, share the idea, and let’s see this idea grow.  

Determining authorship for a peer-reviewed scientific publication

/ Chris Buddle / 3 Comments

Authorship on written work should never be taken lightly.  Authorship implies ownership and responsibility for the ideas and content portrayed as the written word.  In science, our currency is the written word, in the form of peer-reviewed articles submitted and published in scientific journals, and multi-authored works are the norm (sometimes to ridiculous degrees!).   Being an author on a paper is critically important for success in academia: the number of publications on your CV can get you job interviews, scholarships, and often leads to increased research funding.  Scientists are often judged by publication metrics, and although we may not like this system, it remains prevalent.  With this context I pose the following question: What is the process by which an individual is granted the privilege of being an author on a peer-reviewed journal article?  This blog post will provide an objective method to determine authorship for a publication, and by sharing it, I hope it helps bring some clarity to the issue.

(Note: as a biologist, I am drawing from my experiences publishing in the fields of ecology and entomology, and in my role as the Editor-in-Chief for a scientific journal, The Canadian Entomologist – the ideas presented below may not be transferable to other fields of study).

A paper that resulted from a graduate class; should all these individuals be authors on this paper? (yes, of course!)

The method outlined below starts by thinking about five main stages in the publication process, and there are individuals associated with each stage:

1. Research concept, framework, and question:  The research process leading to a publication has a conceptual backbone – it is the overarching research framework.  The background ideas and concepts that initiate the research that leads to a publication come from somewhere (…and someone).  Although the end product of research may be the publication, a good research question is at the start, and drives the entire process.  Without a solid framework for research, and a clear question, the research will simply never be in a form suitable for publication.   The person (or people) who developed the big-picture ideas, research framework, and research question are to be considered as authors on the final publication.  In the University framework, this is often an academic who has developed a laboratory and research program around a thematic area of study.

2.  Funding.  Someone has to pay for research – whether it be a large, collaborative research grant that supports many graduate students, or whether it be a small grant from a local conservation agency.  An individual scientist applied for money, and was able to support the research that leads to the publication.  These monies could directly support the research (e.g., provide travel funds, purchase of equipment), the individual doing the research (e.g., pays the graduate student stipend, or technician), or the monies could offset the costs associated with the publication process itself (e.g., many journals charge authors to submit their work, also known as page charges).    The individual(s) who pay for the research need to be considered as authors on the final publication resulting from the research.  More often than not, this individual is the main “supervisor” of a research laboratory, but could also be important collaborators on grant applications, often from other Universities or Institutions.

3. Research design and data collection:  Once the overall research question is in place, and funding secured, the actual research must be designed and executed.  These are placed together under one heading because it is difficult to separate the two, nor should they be separated.  You cannot design a project without attention to how data are collected, nor can you collect data without a clear design.  In a typical University environment, Master’s and PhD students are intimately associated with this part of the research equation, and spend a very significant portion of their time in design and data collection mode.  Without a doubt, the individual(s) who “design and do” the research must be considered as authors.

4.  Data analyses, and manuscript preparation:  The next step in the process is taking the data, crunching the numbers, preparing figures and tables, and writing a first draft of the manuscript.  This is a very important step in the process, as this is the stage where the research gets transformed into a cohesive form.  In a typical University laboratory, this is often done by Master’s students, PhD students, or post-docs, and the product of this stage is often (part of) a graduate student’s thesis.   However, it is also quite likely that a research associate, technician, or Honour’s student be involved at this stage, or that this stage is done by multiple individuals.  For example, data management and analyses may be done by a research technician whereas the head researcher does the bulk of the synthetic writing.  Regardless, one or many individuals may be involved in this stage of the publication process, and all of these people must be considered as authors on the final product.

5. Editing, manuscript submission, and the post-submission process: The aforementioned stage is certainly not the final stage.  A great deal of time and effort goes into the editing process, and quite often the editing and re-writing of manuscripts is done by different individuals than those who wrote the first draft.  Important collaborators and colleagues may be asked to read and edit the first draft and/or other students within a laboratory may work to fine-tune a manuscript.  Most likely, the supervisor of a graduate students invests a lot of time and energy at this stage, and works to get the manuscript in a form that is ready to be submitted to a scientific journal.   The submission process itself can also be difficult and daunting – papers must be formatted to fit the style requirements for specific journals, and the on-line submission process can take a long time.  After the manuscript has been submitted and reviewed by peers, it will most likely return to authors with requests for revisions.  These revisions can be lengthy, difficult, and require significant input (perhaps from many individuals).   For all these reasons, this fifth stage of the publication process cannot be undervalued, and the individual(s) associated with editing, submitting and dealing with revisions must be considered as authors.

Those five categories help define the main stages that lead to a scientific publication, and there are individuals associated with each stage.  Here’s the formula to consider adopting when considering which individuals should be authors on the final product:  if an individual contributed significantly to three or more of the above stages, they should be an author on the final paper.  Here’s an example: in a ‘typical’ research laboratory, the supervisor likely has a big-picture research question that s/he is working on (Stage 1) and has secured funding to complete that project (Stage 2).  A Master’s student, working with this supervisor, will work on the design and collect the data (Stage 3), and as they prepare their thesis, will do the bulk of the data analysis and write the first draft of the paper (Stage 4).  In most cases, the editing and manuscript submission process is shared by the supervisor and the student, and both individuals are likely involved with the revisions of the manuscript after it has been peer-reviewed (Stage 5).  In this case, both individuals clearly contributed to at least three of five categories, and the paper should be authored by both individuals.

A classic example of a paper with a graduate student and supervisor as co-authors.

What about the research assistant that helped collect data? – since they only contributed to Stage 3, they are not considered as an author.  The same is true of a collaborator at a different University who may have helped secure the funding (Stage 2), but did not help with the process in any other way – they do not qualify as authors on this work.   It is quite possible that a post-doc in a laboratory contributes to multiple stages, even on a single Master’s project. For example, the post-doc may have helped secure the funding, assisted significantly with data analysis, and helped to edit the final paper – this entitles them to authorship.

This entire method may be considered too rigid, and cannot really be implemented given the complexities of the research process, and given personalities and politics associated with the research process. Furthermore, many researchers may include their friends on publications, in hopes that the favour will be returned so both individuals increase their publication numbers.    I do not think this is ethical, and overall, if an individual did not contribute to the research process in a significant way, they should not be authors.  The method outlined above provides one way to help determine how this ‘significant way’ can be determined objectively.  The process is certainly not without fault, nor will it work in all circumstances, but perhaps it will help to define roles and help to consider seriously who should be considered as authors on papers.

I can also admit that I have not always contributed to “3 of 5 stages” on all the paper for which I am an author, so you can call me a hypocrite.  That’s OK, (I’ve been called worse), and I reiterate that the process outlined above is context-dependent, and simply provides a framework, or guide, for thinking about this important issue in science.

I am certainly not alone in this discussion, nor with this concept – Paul Friedman wrote about this (in A New Standard for Authorship) and the method in analogous to the one outlined above (although with more categories).  Some journals also specify their expectations for authorship.  As an example, in its instructions to authors, PNAS states that ‘Authorship should be limited to those who have contributed substantially to the work’, and request that contributions be spelled out clearly.  This is a good idea, and forces people to think about the issue.

I’ll finish with two more important points:  First, determining authorship, and thinking about authorship, must be a transparent and clear process.  Graduate students must not be surprised when their supervisor states that some other researcher will be an author on their work – this should have been clear from the start.  A discussion about authorship must occur early in the research process.  Full stop.

Second, another key question is the order of authors.  For example, when is the student’s name first on a publication, and the supervisor second?  What’s the convention for your field of study? Who should be second author when there are four or five co-authors?  This is a complicated question and, you guessed it, one that will be addressed in a future blog post!

Please share your thoughts… how does your laboratory deal with the question of authorship on scientific papers?

Urban field work: Pollinators in Montreal

/ Chris Buddle / Leave a comment

I finally managed to get a little bit of field work in this week.  Although some would question whether it’s REALLY field work, since it involved driving to a couple of cemeteries and community gardens in the city of Montreal!  This urban field work is the start of a terrific new Master’s project by student Étienne Normandin.  Here he is, happily doing field work in a community garden:

Sweeping for bees (and other insects) in a Montreal community garden

Étienne is worked with Valérie Fournier and me in a collaborative project about bees in Montreal.  In this project, we are interesting in asking about the diversity and community structure of wild and domesticated bees in urban areas, and we are working in two major urban centres: Montreal and Quebec City.   Over the past couple of weeks, Étienne has been setting up traps in community gardens and other habitats (including cemeteries) to assess the bee biodiversity.   Étienne is using a combination of approaches to collect bees, including sweep-netting (as pictured above) and  elevated pan traps, as illustrated here (the different colours are used to attract different kind of bees):

Étienne setting up elevated pan traps, to collect bees

This is the very start of what will be an interesting and important project, especially given the concern about the losses of bees, and the economic and ecological consequence of changing pollinator communities.  I will continue to post developments in this project.  And, I warmly welcome Étienne to the Arthropod Ecology laboratory!

Opening an ecological black box: entomopathogenic fungi in the Arctic

/ Chris Buddle / 1 Comment

While visiting Alaska last week, I had the pleasure of meeting Niels M. Schmidt.  He is a community ecologist (from Aarhus University, Denmark), who studies Arctic sytems and he is one of the key people behind the Zackenberg Research Station in Greenland.   He told me about one of his recently published papers (authored by Nicolai V. Meyling, Niels M. Schmidt, and Jørgen Eilenberg) titled “Occurrence and diversity of fungal entomopathogens in soils of low and high Arctic Greenland” (published in Polar Biology).

An ecological black box: the tundra

By definition (from Wikipedia) entomopathogenic fungi act as parasites of insects – these fungi can kill, or seriously disable insects.  I was amazed at this paper because I have never given much thought to fungal entomopathogens in the Arctic (despite knowing their prevalence in other ecosystems).    Could these fungi be ecologically important in Arctic?  I think Arctic community ecology has been seriously understudied, and we know little about what drives the relative abundance of species.  From an arthropod perspective, we know that some birds depend  on Arthropods for food (e.g. see Holmes 1966), and that flies are important nuisance pests to large mammals (e.g., Witter et al. 2012), but I would argue that most ecological interactions in the Arctic involving arthropods (and their relative importance) remain a mystery.   I could not even speculate on the role of fungal entomopathogens in the Arctic.  This is one of those feared ‘black boxes in ecology’:  probably there, possibly important, likely complex, but knowledge is seriously lacking. 

So along comes this paper: Meyling et al.  took soil samples from locations in the high and low Arctic (i.e., including Zackenberg, at about 74.5 degrees N), and they returned the samples to their laboratory in Denmark.   In their lab, the authors allowed live insects (using Lepidoptera [Pyralidae)] and Coleoptera [Tenebrionidae]) to be exposed to their samples, and they checked regularly for mortality: “...cadavers were rinsed in water, incubated in moist containers and monitored for the emergence of fungi“.  Any fungi that emerged from the (dead) host were identified.

The results: they identified five species of fungal entomopathogens (all in the division Ascomycota).  As the authors state in the start of their discussion “This study is the first to document fungal entomopathogens in soils from Greenland at both low and high Arctic sites. Furthermore, the use of in vivo isolation with living insect baits explicitly documented pathogenicity to these insects.”

Could this Arctic Weevil die from a fungal infection?

The black box has been opened:  indeed, fungal entomopathogens are in the high and low Arctic of Greenland, and are therefore likely in the high and low Arctic around the globe.  These fungi probably play a role in arthropod mortality in these systems, but this remains completely understudied.  As the authors point out, given the tight relationship between fungi and temperature, what effect could a changing climate have on these fungal entomopathogens?   This is potentially very important, as increased mortality of insects by fungi could trickle all the way up the food web…  I think we need to get more mycologists into the Arctic, and we must work to properly articulate high Arctic food webs with all the black boxes opened wide. 

References:

Holmes, R. (1966). Feeding Ecology of the Red-Backed Sandpiper (Calidris Alpina) in Arctic Alaska Ecology, 47 (1) DOI: 10.2307/1935742

Meyling, N., Schmidt, N., & Eilenberg, J. (2012). Occurrence and diversity of fungal entomopathogens in soils of low and high Arctic Greenland Polar Biology DOI: 10.1007/s00300-012-1183-6

Witter, L., Johnson, C., Croft, B., Gunn, A., & Gillingham, M. (2012). Behavioural trade-offs in response to external stimuli: time allocation of an Arctic ungulate during varying intensities of harassment by parasitic flies Journal of Animal Ecology, 81 (1), 284-295 DOI: 10.1111/j.1365-2656.2011.01905.x

ResearchBlogging.org

Rethinking guild classifications for insect herbivores

/ Chris Buddle / Leave a comment

This is the start a (somewhat) regular series of blog posts highlighting some of my favourite research papers in the discipline of Arthropod ecology – I’ll call this category “must-read research papers”.  These posts will force me to look critically at some of the great research papers I have read in the past little while, figure out the ‘take home messages’ from these papers, and articulate this message.  I also hope these posts can inspire others to think about the best papers within their discipline and to share their opinions and ideas to a broad audience.  That is what science communication is all about! 

Typical herbivory by a “leaf chewing” insect

For the first in this series, I wanted to highlight a paper by Novotny (and fifteen other co-authors) published in 2010 in the Journal of Animal Ecology.  This work is titled “Guild-specific patterns of species richness and host specialization in plant–herbivore food webs from a tropical forest.”   This paper was discussed in my Insect Diversity class last autumn (co-taught with Terry Wheeler), and was used as an example of assumptions we make when considering what it means to be a herbivore.    From my biassed perspective (working mostly in north-eastern deciduous forests and the Arctic), when I think about herbivores, I automatically classify herbivores into a few pretty obvious categories: leaf chewers, leaf miners, gall-makers, and a suite of ‘piercing-sucking’-type herbivores.  My off-the-cuff estimate of the number of herbivore guilds would be much less than a dozen.

Novotny et al.’s paper really shook up my view of what it means to be a herbivore.  Using their considerable data and expertise from work in Papua New Guinea, the authors refine plant-herbivore food webs and, quite simply, explode the concept.    The authors classified insect herbivores by their main mode of feeding (chewing, sucking), developmental stages (larvae, adult), where they feed (internally, externally), and by the plant part which is fed upon (leaves, flowers, fruits, xylem, phloem, etc).    Their system resulted in 72 classifications – which they reduced down to more manageable 24 – still over double what my initial estimate was.  Their system certainly includes the classic guilds (e.g., leaf chewers) but also included some wonderfully detailed interactions that are easily overlooked (especially by someone who studies spiders…).  For example, fruit chewers, flower chewers, and xylem suckers.   As an aside, and for some eye candy, here’s a nice photo of a caterpillar from The Bug Geek (reproduced here, with permission)

A cryptic caterpillar, (c) C. Ernst

The authors then took their new and detailed classification system and completed a food web analysis for their tropical system in Papua New Guinea, focusing on 11 main guilds.  Their resulting 11 food-web diagrams are a lovely depiction of multivariate data in 2-dimensions, as they show the frequency with which each host plant is consumed by herbivores, the herbivore abundance and the frequency of each interaction – and they present this for 9 standardized plant species, for each of the 11 guilds.   Their research depicts “6818 feeding links between 224 plant species and 1490 herbivore species drawn from 11 distinct feeding guilds”. WOW!  They also show that 251 species of herbivores are associated with each tree species within their study system.  There are clearly a lot of different ways for herbivores to make a living.

This paper represents a major undertaking, and it is a bit sobering to see the results and see that despite the efforts, relatively few ‘generalities’ exist – that is to say, there are examples of extreme host specificity, extreme generalist feeding, and everything in between.   Here’s a quote from that paper to illustrate that point:

“We documented a wide range of host specificity patterns among herbivorous guilds: host specificity measures spanned almost the full range of theoretically possible values from extreme trophic generalization to monophagy. These results demonstrate the importance of taxonomically and ecologically comprehensive studies, as no single guild can be designated as ecologically representative of all herbivores.”

Mealybugs: another type of herbivore. (c) C. Ernst, reproduced with permission

What’s the take-home message?  

For me, this is a strong paper that depicts effectively the complexity of plant-herbivore food-webs and illustrates (once again!) that diversity in tropical forests is stunning. More than that, the work shows this diversity from a functional, food-web perspective, and illustrates how guilds behave differently.   From a more practical perspective, this paper is forcing me to rethink how I view herbivores – i.e., they are more than leaf-chewing caterpillars and aphids.  They are also root-feeders, fruit chewers, flower chewers, and specialized xylem suckers.  Novotny et al. suggest researchers use their 24 guild system for classifying insect herbivores, and I agree – their classification system is still manageable, yet much more comprehensive than what many researchers use.

If the topic of food-webs, plant-insect interactions, and the biodiversity & ecology of tropical forests interests you, this is a must-read paper.

Reference:

Novotny, V., Miller, S., Baje, L., Balagawi, S., Basset, Y., Cizek, L., Craft, K., Dem, F., Drew, R., Hulcr, J., Leps, J., Lewis, O., Pokon, R., Stewart, A., Allan Samuelson, G., & Weiblen, G. (2010). Guild-specific patterns of species richness and host specialization in plant-herbivore food webs from a tropical forest Journal of Animal Ecology, 79 (6), 1193-1203 DOI: 10.1111/j.1365-2656.2010.01728.x

On Ants and Elephants: Clash of the titans

/ Chris Buddle / 1 Comment

Now and then you come across a research paper that changes your perspective, and offers you a view into ecological interactions that, at first glance, seem unbelievable.  Such was the case last week in my graduate class in Forest Entomology.  One of the students led a discussion of a paper titled “Defensive plant-ants stabilize megaherbivore-driven landscape change in an African savanna”.   It’s an elegant paper about the interactions between elephants, ants and trees.  It was published in Current Biology in 2010.

This is a plate from the paper showing a "grazed" tree

This is not a particularly new story – it was actually discussed on a number of blogs quite a while ago:

Here: http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/2010/09/03/wee-ants-protect-african-savanna-trees-from-elephants/     …by the way, that journalist failed to spell the primary author’s name correctly.  Unacceptable…

…here, http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/09/100902121053.htm

And Conservation Magazine did a write-up on the research:

Here’s a quote from that article:   “Pitting ants against elephants doesn’t seem like a fair fight. But according to a study in Current Biology, these humble insects can act as mighty “bodyguards” that prevent elephants from munching trees on the African savanna”

The take-home message from the research is something like this:

Elephants suppress tree cover in the Savanna, and their intense feeding behaviour can alter the landscape composition of trees.  However, some species of trees, on some soil types, have symbiotic relationships with ants (genera Crematogaster and Tetraponera).  Though a series of well-designed experiments (i.e., manipulative and observational), the authors (Jacob Goheen and Todd Palmer) show that the ants are able to effectively defend some trees from these mega-herbivores and thus are indirectly affecting the tree composition at a landscape scale.  It’s a story of ants, elephants, and the Savanna landscape.

For a visual, here’s a nice photo of Crematogaster ants from Florida (thanks to Alex Wild for permission to post his image here)

Crematogaster ants (C) Alex Wild

So, what makes it worth revisiting this paper, now, and why is this paper and topic particularly interesting?

Well, two things came up in the discussion last week that have prompted this post.

1) It’s “Clash of the Titans” NOT “David and Goliath”.  Some of the aforementioned posts seem to like the whole “little ant takes on those big elephants” angle.  I just don’t think that is an appropriate analogy.   To be fair, an individual ant is certainly small compared to an elephant (and the authors of the research paper are quoted along these lines), but in terms of overall biomass, ants rule.  For example, it is argued that ants make up 15-20% of terrestrial animal biomass!  Furthermore, globally, I would argue that ants play a much more important functional role in many ecosystems than most vertebrates (although perhaps a proportionately greater effect in tropical regions).  Don’t misunderstand – I love elephants as much as the next person… but they are not the Goliath in that article.   In this paper, the Goliath was always the ants, and Goliath wins.

2) Another interesting point came up in our discussion.  The story is fascinating, the science is strong, and to the broader community of biologists/ecologists, it was new.  However, to the local people that live with and observe these interactions everyday, it’s probably not surprising, nor is it likely anything new.  It’s one of those cases of a ‘stunning’ discovery that, when speaking with natural historians, and people that live in proximity of the study area, may not actually be ground-breaking.  Let me be clear: I am NOT saying this shouldn’t be published, nor am I criticizing the science of this paper.  Instead, I wish to merely point out that there’s a good chance that behind these types of studies are probably a group of people who may find it quite surprising that a bunch of scientists are getting excited about an everyday, common occurrence.  This is something to keep in mind as we work to publish our latest, newsworthy results.

Here are some more links:

One of the authors (T. Palmer) for this study writes science blogs for the Huffington Post: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/todd-palmer-and-rob-pringle

And if you like ants, go here and browse: http://www.alexanderwild.com/

How to review a scientific paper

/ Chris Buddle / 1 Comment

Last week’s post focused on WHY it’s good to review papers.  This week, the focus is on HOW to review a paper.  By “paper” I mean a manuscript resulting from primary research, submitted to peer-reviewed scientific journal.  The ideas and opinions here are drawn from my own experience in the fields of ecology / entomology – not all the comments will apply to all fields.

Reviews of a research paper will vary tremendously depending on the experience and expertise of the individual, the research discipline, and depending on what people think a ‘review’ ought to be.  For example, reviewers sometimes approach a manuscript as if they were copy-editors, and spend a lot of time and energy fixing grammar, sentence structure, and other stylistic / editorial issues within a paper.   This is not a productive use of your time – these things can be done by (paid) copy-editors further along in the publication process.  Instead, a good review should (i) focus on the scientific quality, (ii) ensure that the overall paper delivers the research message appropriately, (iii) assess that the manuscript fits within the aims and scope of the journal, and (iv) confirm that the manuscript is aligned with the field of study.    Of course, a readable and clean paper makes this much easier (another reason authors should make sure their manuscripts are error-free, and readable, prior to submission!).

For most reviews, two reads of a paper are required.  My advice is to read a manuscript from start to finish, and then walk away for a day or so.  This lets the material settle and work away in mysterious ways, out of your conscious thought.  Upon return, do another read, only this time write down positive and negative comments about the paper, using the following list for guidance:

Big Picture: What is the conceptual framework, and is it a good one? Do the author’s make a convincing argument about the broader rationale behind their research? Do they use (recent and old) literature effectively?

Research Question: One of most important parts of a paper is the section dealing with the overall research question / hypothesis / prediction.  Think carefully about this section: it must be clear, concise, logical, and ‘testable’. Everything in the rest of the paper must relate directly to the objectives of the study.

Methods:  fundamentally, do they make sense?  Remember, the scientific method is about repeatability of an experiment: could you do the project using the described methods?  Are the methods up-to-date? Where might they lead to errors or biases?

Data management/analyses:  How were data managed after they were collected?  What was the overall data management and analysis strategy? What are the response variables measured and what is the unit of statistical replication?  What test(s) did the authors complete?  What assumptions do these tests require and did they do tests to ensure they did not violate the assumptions?  Are ‘controls’ required, and if so, what are they and how are they dealt with in a statistical framework?

Results: are the figures/tables presented in an effective manner?  Are they clear and relate directly to the research questions? Do they make sense in light of the data analysis strategy? What’s missing?  Is their supplementary information (is it accessible, elsewhere)?

Discussion:  a discussion section of a paper is meant to be somewhat speculative, but it should not wander uncontrollably from the data and results.  Does the discussion section suggest alternative explanations for patterns, or do the author’s merely use this part of their paper in an act of self-congratulation? Do the author’s point to some of the flaws in the study and offer ways to improve the experiment?  Do the author’s return to the overall (broad) conceptual framework and revisit this in a meaningful way?

Literature Cited:  did they miss important papers?  Are there any unusual trends? (e.g., too many citations of unpublished works or personal communications, too may citations of the author’s friends, ignored old literature, depended too heavily on old literature?)

Working through this list will help come up with the key issues with a manuscript.  In addition, it may be useful to think about some of the following broader points:

• Does the paper move the discipline forward in a new and exciting way or is the work largely confirmatory?

• Is the research driven by a ‘cool’ system, or a specific taxa, ecosystem or place, or is the research driven by a strong research question and the system/taxa/place are secondary?

• Does the research make linkages to larger social/economic/environmental issues?  Should it? Do the author’s use larger environmental issues or politics just to ‘look important’, or are the linkages necessary and meaningful?

• Is the work original or a re-hashing of someone else’s approach (perhaps in a different system or with a different model organism)?

• Is the work appropriate for the journal?

This last point is quite important – your review must be within the ‘context’ of the journal, and of your discipline.   You don’t want to review a natural history paper in a focused entomological journal in the same way that you would review a paper about theoretical mathematical models for a general ecological journal.   Always keep the journal’s audience in mind.

In theory, you should now be ready to write your review and submitting it to the journal.  Submitting your actual review typically involves three tasks.  For most journals, reviewers are asked to provide comments for the authors, confidential comments to the editor, and reviewers are typically asked to rate the manuscript.

The first task, and the one that takes the most time and energy, is to write all your  comments that will be forwarded to the authors.  Try to keep your comments and writing concise, and clear.   In general, a review of 1-2 pages (single-spaced) is a good goal – most reviews are much shorter than that, but if you follow the points discussed above, you will be providing a very helpful and high quality review, and it will take you more than a page to do so.

Always start your review with a quick one-paragraph summary of the work (this shows that you read it!).  You should then try to provide authors some positive feedback before delving into (constructive) criticisms.  Always keep the tone of your writing even-handed, and constructive.  Don’t be mean (this sure won’t help your scientific karma!).   I recommend first providing general ‘big picture’ criticisms, and then follow with a section of ‘specific comments’ – this can be where you can highlight those stylistic/editorial issues that have been uncovered.   In general, it is useful to provide a numbered list of your criticisms (you may even wish to use subheadings, e.g., taken from the list above) – this helps authors respond to your comments in a clear manner, and also assists the editorial board for the journal.

Without experience doing reviews, it is likely that a good review will take a long time to complete (i.e. > half a day).  However, it does get easier, and I believe that after practice, a good review can be completed within a couple of hours, provided you know the discipline well.

The review, as I have discussed it above, is really for the authors, and is to help the Editor(s) make a final decision about a manuscript.  In your comments to the authors, you must avoid making any statements about whether the paper should be published (or not) – this is not the job of a reviewer!  In fact, these kind of statements can place an editorial board in an awkward position if reviewers make claims about whether a paper is publishable – a journal may have to refuse (good) paper simply due to page constraints, or the fact that a paper may be a poor fit within a particular issue.  The Editors (and publishers) make all these final decisions, not you!

The second task is when you provide confidential comments to the editors, and this is a place where you can be more candid, and can certainly make your opinions known about whether the work is publishable.

The third and final task is where you get to score or rate the paper.  This should align with your actual review.  For example, it’s pretty bad form to be highly critical in written review and than rate the paper as ‘acceptable in its present form’.  Or, providing and short and positive review should not typically equate with a rejection!

The style of these scales vary tremendously, but most having wording something like this:

-Accept in its present form with no revisions

-Accept after minor revisions (re-review unnecessary)

-Accept after major revisions (after re-review)

-Reject but encourage re-submission in another form (e.g. short paper)

-Reject

If your review uncovers more than a couple of significant criticisms, it’s likely you will select Major revisions.  Minor revisions are typically more related to specific concerns with specific sections of the manuscript and minor revisions generally do not require authors to rework sections of their paper (e.g., new analyses, different presentations of results, rewriting a discussion).

Now you’re done.  Phew. Take a break until the next request comes in…