Abstract
Ask just about any journal editor and they will tell you that finding good reviewers is hard work (see also Rosenfeld, 2010); finding reviewers to accept an invitation to review can sometimes seem near impossible! I’ve often found myself reflecting on why it is that people decline review requests. Lack of alignment between the content of the article with the reviewer’s expertise and not having enough time are the two reasons I come up with most often. While the former point is unequivocally an excellent reason to decline an invitation (Cooper, 2009; Rosenfeld, 2010), the latter point has prompted further reflection on my part: Why is it that some people say yes, rather than no, despite their own workload? There must be more to it than an inability to say no and/or a sense of professional duty (Lovejoy, Revenson, & France, 2011). Drawing on my own experiences, and conversations I’ve had with colleagues, I’ve narrowed down some valuable and important reasons why, despite our already overburdened schedules, we should review. These reasons include benefit to our respective disciplines (in this instance, the community of qualitative and mixed methods researchers; Clark & Sousa, 2015; Lovejoy et al., 2011) and our own work (Lovejoy et al., 2011).
Reviewing as an Effective Way of Staying Current When You Are Pressed for Time
The act of reviewing can feed into our own work in important ways. During those phases that I have found myself most pressed for time, one of the first things to exit my to-do list is usually reading. It often seems that there is simply no time to engage in what appears to be a luxury. And of course, for researchers, reading is not a luxury but rather a necessity. We read to stay informed about developments in the field, to continue to learn and develop our own knowledge base, and to shape our own research and theory development. By accepting a review invitation, we are compelled to read. And in reading, this act of reviewing, we have an opportunity to stay informed not only about other research but emerging research (see also Lovejoy et al., 2011; Rosenfeld, 2010); we are able to see publications before they are even in press. In this way, reviewing can be an extremely efficient way of staying informed about broader developments in theory, fieldwork, and approaches to analysis and dissemination.
Reviewing as a Means of Improving Our Own Thinking and Writing
While reviewing exposes us to the most recent developments in our respective fields, it can also facilitate more critical perspectives in our own research and writing. Reading an article in order to review it draws on a different perspective—a different type of thinking—than reading simply for the sake of reading. We bring attention to the content of the article being reviewed that we may not otherwise. This reflection and perspective can often challenge the ways in which we think about the theory we use, the ways in which we implement data collection and analysis techniques, and importantly our own approaches to the dissemination of findings.
When we review, we are assessing all the components of the manuscript, considering the ways in which these components contribute to the author’s overall argument and their conclusions. In this way, we can improve on the way we structure our own articles and the arguments they contain. Similarly, we review articles for the clarity of what is being said: Is a clear purpose and argument presented? Are we able to follow what was done in terms of the research and the related findings? Here again, the skills we develop as reviewers regarding writing and presentation styles can be integrated into our own writing process and in doing so improve and strengthen our own writing and publications.
Finally, as reviewers, we attend to the way in which the research process is presented; how authors talk about what they did and why. Again, we have an opportunity to challenge our own thinking and especially our taken-for-granted assumptions about fieldwork approaches and the ways in which we present them. This is especially important in the area of mixed methods studies and studies that make use of multimedia data; these approaches to data gathering increasingly necessitate “outside the box” thinking in terms of how our articles are written and how we present findings and data to support those findings. As we navigate the process of publishing together (as authors and reviewers), we may be better able to identify these new publishing structures and options.
Reviewing as a Means of Improving the Content of Articles and Shaping the Content of Journals
These ruminations on why we should review extend beyond our own individual work; they are very much related to larger conversations regarding the promotion of qualitative research. Case in point is the 2016 “#BMJnoQual” debate regarding the publication of qualitative research. In their reflection on the uptake of qualitative articles by journals, Clark and Thompson (2016) ask of “those seeking to widen access and increase awareness of their qualitative research to be even more determined to meet the challenge of making their work relevant and useful to readers of high impact mainstream journals” (p. 1). While this call relates directly to us as authors, it also contains an implied responsibility to us as potential reviewers.
Qualitative and mixed methods researchers often bemoan a lack of understanding on the part of editors and reviewers. Because of these and other concerns, authors shy away from journals that are of importance to their discipline or that stand to promote qualitative approaches to research (Clark & Thompson, 2016). Rather than objecting to reviewers who don’t understand, we need to recognize that “the reviewers” include—or should include—an active group of colleagues who themselves are qualitative or mixed methods researchers. It is our community who should be driving these processes, especially within the realm of high impact mainstream journals as well as those publications that we want to see grow into high impact mainstream journals.
If we as qualitative and mixed methods researchers want to actively facilitate the publication of our research findings in prominent journals, one approach is to steer the direction of the larger process of academic publishing by engaging as reviewers. By participating in the review process, we can shape the way qualitative and mixed methods research publications are perceived and received by journal editors in particular. As Clark and Thompson (2016) imply, qualitative research publications are often long documents that combine numerous findings and aspects of a project. In many ways, these seemingly complex publications feed into the argument, albeit misaligned, that qualitative research lacks applied value in terms of policy and practice. While there certainly is a responsibility on the part of authors to bring focus and clarity to their articles, by taking on the reviewer role, we could better support one another as colleagues, using the review process to further these efforts. For those with experience and established expertise in their field especially, conducting reviews of articles supports the development and maintenance of the quality and rigour of qualitative publications in two ways. First, by supporting or focusing the content of articles through feedback to authors. And second, by commenting on research quality in feedback to editors and in doing so, championing the rigour and value of qualitative and mixed methods approaches.
To actively engage in this process, we need to ensure that we are included on reviewer lists for journals of interest and that we are registered in databases like Open Researcher & Contributor ID (ORCID; http://orcid.org/). Importantly, the key words we attach to our profiles are valuable indicators for editors. Consequently, we should revisit these regularly and ensure that they are current, accurate, and relevant. And finally, there is the issue of accepting an invitation. Of course, there are times when it is quite impossible to say yes, but next time that invitation arrives in your inbox, consider for a few seconds when last you read something, what new insights the manuscript may hold for you, and the role your review could play in advancing the field, if you do say yes.
Postscript
While writing this editorial, I came across several excellent discussions of the review process and in particular, what comprises a good review. Most of these articles were prompted either by existing critiques of the peer-review process (see, e.g., Cooper, 2009) or by an awareness that academics lack training or knowledge in how to conduct a review (Rosenfeld, 2010). As such, the various authors provide extremely useful and clear guidelines for reviewing. While their intended audiences may have been junior colleagues, all reviewers could benefit from the occasional reminder of what constructive and meaningful reviews comprise (Cooper, 2009; Lovejoy et al., 2011; Rosenfeld, 2010).