There seems to be a widespread misconception that "peer review" refers
to a process in which the material to be reviewed is thrown open to
the public. In fact the term is more restrictive and means a review by
a small number of selected experts in the field. Here is a description
from http://www.mcb.co.uk/services/articles/literati/peer/peerrev.htm:
The Peer Review Process
by Paul Evans
What is the Peer Review Process?
Essentially, the peer review process is a quality control mechanism for
academic or learned journals and, to a lesser extent, professional or
practitioner journals.
At the first stage of this quality control mechanism is the editor. It is
the editor's responsibility to maintain high editorial standards and to
ensure that the journal fulfils the mission aims stated to the customers
when they subscribed and previously agreed with the publishers. The
journal's aims and objectives, together with guidelines for authors are
often found on the inside rear cover of the journal's issues.
The editor decides if a submitted paper is suitable for inclusion in the
journal. If the article is peripheral to the journal's area of interest
then it will be either rejected immediately or the editor will ask the
author to resubmit the paper with a number of revisions. If a paper is
rejected outright, the editor will often suggest that the author submits
the paper to a more appropriate journal.
If the editor decides that an article is suitable then it will enter
the peer review process. For most journals the common currency is double
blind refereeing. The editor selects usually two but sometimes as many
as four independent reviewers who are fellow researchers/ practitioners
and subject area specialists. Sometimes the reviewers are members of the
Editorial Advisory Board or the Editorial Review Board and other times
the editor will use ad hoc reviewers from his or her personal network.
In the double blind process all information on the paper which
identifies the author is removed and the paper is coded and sent to
the reviewers. The reviewers then judge the paper and return it to the
editor. The editor often passes comments from the reviewers back to the
author, particularly when rejection or revision is advised. In theory
neither the author nor the reviewers know each other's identity, thus
ensuring impartiality. This is not always the case, especially if the
subject area does not support a large community. It is quite possible that
the reviewer will be able to guess the origin of a paper by its content.
After an article has been reviewed it is then in one of three states;
rejected, accepted or returned for revision with the suggestion that the
author makes amendments to the article which might meet the reviewers'
satisfaction.
If the reviewers ask for an article to be revised, the author has the
opportunity to amend the article and resubmit it for review. At this
second review stage, the reviewers decide if the alterations the author
has made have taken in to account all the comments made at the first
review. Accordingly, the paper will be finally accepted or rejected.
If an author is unhappy with any stage of the review process he or she
can, of course, withdraw the paper and submit it to a different journal.
