Editing and peer reviewing – Kwok NG.

Publishing is a key component for scientific work. It is important that we can communicate what we do as researchers and essential to share the results we find.

Yet, publishing scientific work has several stages to it. For start, the paper needs to be written with mainly scientists as an audience. Once that has been written, it get submitted to a journal, where the editor would help find experts to carry out a review of the paper. This is called peer review and serves as an important function to improve the paper for publication, or it can also be used to let authors and editor know if the work is publishable. Once it has been reviewed and the reviewers eventually recommend it for publication, it can then be approved by the editor for publication. Finally, the paper gets proofread and formatted before being published.

As a guest editor of a special collection in BMC Public Health on “Promoting physical activity: challenges, opportunities, and evidence-based strategies for active lifestyles” – https://www.biomedcentral.com/collections/COL2382, people from around the world have been submitting articles for consideration. It is an interesting experience to carry out this editor role. The shear interest in this special collection has been tremendous. It is fortunate that I am working with a colleague on this collection and the BMC system supports us to do so. It has however, been a bit daunting to find volunteers to review the paper. This often slows the process for papers to get to a decision, as reviewers also need some time to carry out the review. Reviewers do not get much incentive to carry out the work, but their contribution is critical to the publishing process. To be able to make scientific advances, papers need to be published without much delay. This is why some authors are choosing to put their work on pre-print servers, but it has the risk that the pre-print has not be peer-reviewed. Hence, readers must read it with caution as there might be some errors not noticed by the authors at the time of submitting it. To have confidence in scientific research, reviewers need to carry out the reviews. So, the next time you get an invitation, before immediately rejecting it, kindly consider if you have the opportunity to do the review that would help the editor.

Furthermore, the call for papers is still open until 22^nd August 2025. Feel free to submit your paper, with the knowledge that we try our best to get reviewers to give feedback in a timely manner.