The peer-review process

Peer review of papers is one of the major pillars of scientific publications, such as the case of Odontoestomatología. It is a complex and rigorous process conducted by national and/or foreign experts that allow for the critical evaluation of manuscripts submitted for publication in a scientific journal. In the area of health, this process becomes even more critical, especially in assessing the credibility of the results of studies and in describing procedures and solving cases.

Peer review has advantages for everyone involved in the editorial process, namely: editors because expert evaluation contributes to the editorial decision on manuscripts and authors since the peer reviewers' suggestions, adjustments and corrections allow them to improve the paper, optimizing its quality¹.

Selecting the right peer reviewers, according to the subject matter of the manuscript, is one of the main tasks of the editorial team of scientific journals, as well as systematic compliance with the stages involved. For instance, when the peer reviewer requests a new revision after the authors' adjustments, when the two peer reviewers issue contradictory reports (one accepts, and the other rejects a paper), so an additional reviewer must be selected in order to make a reliable decision, among other things.

Types of peer review

Peer review can be done in three ways: a) single-blind, b) double-blind, and c) open².

The peer-review process

The anonymity of reviewers is a general practice, although all experts do not necessarily accept it. First, the publishing team may receive a complaint from a peer reviewer asking to be informed of the names and/or institutional affiliations of the authors, though this happens very rarely. In fact, good peer reviewers, knowledgeable in their field and the researchers working in it, would be able to detect the origin of a work, at least at the level of the research group, without the specific information having been provided. Therefore, it may sometimes happen that specialists who are requested to act as peer reviewers decline to do so because they know one of the authors or have conflicts of interest.

In an anonymous system, the authors do not know the identity of the peer reviewers who evaluate their work to avoid conflicts and possible clashes.

The time and effort generously given by peer reviewers are only compensated by the satisfaction of having been selected to evaluate a manuscript given the recognition of their expertise in the subject.

To act with transparency, it is good practice for scientific publications to publicly and regularly disclose the identity of the reviewers who have contributed over some time.

In this sense, the following is the list of Odontoestomatología reviewers who worked with us in 2018 and 2019 (Tables 1,2 and 3). During this period, 40 papers were published, including 20 national and 20 foreign articles, 10 of which were not accepted.