Enhancing trust in peer review: Peer Review Week 2020

Peer Review Week takes place from 21–25 September this year and celebrates the central role of peer review across all forms of scholarly communication. This year’s theme is trust.

A robust peer review process is an essential quality assurance step in making sure what's being published is reliable.

But what makes a review trustworthy? And how – as a community, as scientists, and as publishers – can we cultivate and sustain a culture of outstanding peer review?

Nicola Nugent, Publishing Manager at the Royal Society of Chemistry, says: "The peer review process is one that is built on trust. As an author you trust that your work is reviewed fairly, and as a reader you trust that the work published has been verified as rigorous, accurate, and of high quality. Peer review plays a critical role in upholding the quality and integrity of the scientific literature – we need a trustworthy peer review process to maintain trust in published research."

Keep an eye out for a special article in Chemistry World – which will explore the theme of trust in peer review processes.

Please tweet us @RoySocChem using #TrustInPeerReview to share your experiences as a reviewer. You can also follow #PeerRevWeek20 for more on peer review week.