Excellence in Peer Review 

As the backbone of the peer-review process, reviewers provide a vital service. JBJS is very grateful to all of our reviewers and thank them for their excellent work. One way we do that is through our Elite Reviewers Program, which recognizes those individuals who consistently provide stellar effort in service to the orthopaedic community, going above and beyond as reviewers. We recently welcomed in a new term of Elite Reviewers, which we do twice a year. More details about the program, and our current Elite Reviewers roster, can be found here. 

JBJS also strives to provide helpful resources for reviewers looking to improve their craft. In that vein, we would like to highlight a recent essay by Jasmine Wallace, the Peer Review Manager at the American Society for Microbiology. In her Scholarly Kitchen blog entry, Wallace offers a series of pointers on how to be a good peer reviewer and avoid the pitfalls of “bad” reviewer behavior. New and veteran reviewers alike might find the tips useful. 

Wallace’s recommendations include keeping track of deadlines and using each journal’s reviewer guidelines to ensure a review is in line with a journal’s goals. (JBJS’ Reviewer Resource Center provides guidelines and much more.) Perhaps most important is Wallace’s emphasis on keeping the “peer” in “peer review”. Wallace states that the “ultimate goal is to strengthen your community of researchers,” both when guiding work to acceptance and even when composing rejections in a way that will help authors to improve their research. 

We thank all of our reviewers for their dedication and hard work.