Like most of you, I am regularly contacted to review articles, and despite my busy schedule and priority toward the business of Pediatric Exercise Science, I try to fulfill my fair share of requests to review for other journals. What constitutes “fair” is my qualitative judgment when balancing the other demands of my job, the priorities, or deadlines I am currently experiencing, the interest in the topic matter requested to review and a sense of wanting to serve well my academic discipline. This notion of “service” can at times be a difficult one to fulfill given the relentless demands placed on academics and clinicians, the increasing number of new journals asking for reviews, and the debate about the quality and quantity of publications. Current conversations about the monetization of the publication houses and how best to acknowledge the significant contributions of reviewers add further to the decision making of whether to review or not.
One of my tasks for 2024 was to try to prioritize making the reviewing process as productive as possible. After making the final decisions to accept a manuscript for publication, I often take the time to read through the feedback reports and have personally written to reviewers to thank them for their expertise and deliberations in writing such an informative feedback report. On occasions, I have even received correspondence from authors stating how informative the reports were and how it had influenced their thinking in redesigning or conducting their future work. These observations are examples of when it is working well but our journal, like others, is grappling to expedite the process of reviewing submissions. I and my team of associate editors try to maintain regular correspondence with reviewers to return the manuscript on time. Of course, there are always some manuscripts that are harder to get invitations accepted for review and returned, but we will always persevere, and we are grateful for authors’ understanding. Some preliminary data show our processes are working, that is, desk rejection decisions have decreased from 12 days in 2023 to 9 days in 2024. For those submitted articles sent out for review, the reaching of a first decision is made within 38 days (down from 106 days in 2023) and the final decision is made within 89 days (down from 159 days in 2023).
A new initiative, due to be launched in 2025, will be our “Peer Review Mentorship” scheme. The aim is to develop a peer review mentorship scheme for Pediatric Exercise Science, which will provide early career researchers with access to a supportive structure to gain experience of the peer review process. Full details will be provided on our website, but if you are an early career researcher who has little or no experience reviewing manuscripts and would want to be mentored by a senior editorial board member, then we would like to hear from you. As ever, I continue to discuss with the publishers (Human Kinetics), other ways we can recognize the contribution of reviewers besides providing reviewer certificates, links to such organizations as Publons, which allows you to track, verify, and be recognized for your peer review work, and receive a discount on Human Kinetics books. However, if you have further ideas as to how we can best recognize reviewers’ contributions, I would be happy to receive them.
Finally, I would like to personally thank all our reviewers who have contributed to providing feedback to authors, helped enhance the journal’s reputation and I wish you a productive 2025.