In 2024, CCTS reviewers continue to make outstanding contributions to the peer review process. They demonstrated professional effort and enthusiasm in their reviews and provided comments that genuinely help the authors to enhance their work.
Hereby, we would like to highlight some of our outstanding reviewers, with a brief interview of their thoughts and insights as a reviewer. Allow us to express our heartfelt gratitude for their tremendous effort and valuable contributions to the scientific process.
February, 2024
Sujith V Cherian, Lyndon B Johnson Hospital, USA
April, 2024
Mikkel Nicklas Frandsen, Zealand University Hospital, Denmark
June, 2024
Emanuele Stirpe, Teaching Hospital of Paracelsus Medical University, Italy
August, 2024
Sarah N. Price, Wake Forest University, USA
September, 2024
Masaaki Nagano, National Center for Global Health and Medicine, Japan
December, 2024
Alessio Campisi, Ospedale Borgo Trento, Italy
February, 2024
Sujith V Cherian
Sujith V Cherian, MD, FCCP, DAABIP, is Director of Interventional Pulmonology and Pleural diseases, Lyndon B Johnson Hospital and Associate Professor in Divisions of Critical Care, Pulmonary and Sleep Medicine, University of Texas Health-McGovern Medical School, Houston, Texas. Dr. Cherian earned his medical degree at the Government Medical College, Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala, India, following which he completed his residency training in Internal Medicine at the SUNY Upstate Medical University. He then did his fellowship in pulmonary and critical care medicine and interventional pulmonology at the University of Texas Health-McGovern Medical School and UT MD Anderson Cancer Center. His research area covers pulmonary diseases, pleural diseases, medical thoracoscopy, interventional pulmonology in resource limited settings, and rare lung diseases. His recently co-edited a book on Rare Lung diseases, published by Taylor and Francis publishers, came out in print in March 2023. His ongoing projects are Predictors for spontaneous pleurodesis with indwelling pleural catheters for malignant pleural effusions; Medical thoracoscopy in resource limited settings. Connect with him on LinkedIn.
Dr. Cherian reckons that peer review forms the cornerstone in medical literature. Good peer review is essential in any form of medical literature, be it case reports, images, review article, or original articles. While it not only helps improve quality and assess the suitability for publication, but it also helps to improve the credibility of the journal.
In Dr. Cherian’s opinion, some degree of bias is inevitable in any peer review, and the fundamental basis of a healthy peer-review system should aim to fully minimize this as possible. Blind peer review done by at least 2-3 reviewers helps minimize this and should be normal components of a healthy peer-review system. Moreover, he thinks that meaningful peer review should involve a good understanding of the authors’ intent, constructive criticism and more than just superficial correction of grammatical mistakes. Within this context, if English is not the author’s native language, then a review by a native English speaker would be helpful to bring out the intended meaning. It is necessary that novice authors are given value, with the consideration that every reviewer or medical expert started out in this fashion at some point in their career. It is within this realm that he would say constructive criticism to bring the best work forward and subsequently an excellent manuscript would be of the utmost importance.
“I am absolutely honoured to review for the CCTS and when journals ask me to peer review, I feel it is a testament that they consider my publications and research of significant value. Along the same lines, there is always a lot that I learn when I perform peer review, as it may be highlighting new advances in the field or unusual or rare aspects of diseases, which overall help me to be a better clinician. Providing timely peer reviews is extremely important and hence committing to more than two journals at any time should be strongly discouraged, in my opinion,” says Dr. Cherian.
(by Lareina Lim, Brad Li)
April, 2024
Mikkel Nicklas Frandsen
Mikkel Nicklas Frandsen, a Ph.D. in Surgical Sciences from the University of Copenhagen, currently is employed as a postdoctoral fellow at Zealand University Hospital in the Center for Surgical Science, where he is going into Big Data and clinical data science primarily in colorectal cancer, but his hope is to expand on this. He has an interest in perioperative optimization amplified by his mentor professor Henrik Kehlet, with a specific interest in perioperative immunology, pain, and physical pre- and rehabilitation.
The Danish word for “Science” is “Videnskab”, which translates directly to “knowledge creation”. In Dr. Frandsen’s opinion, science, and scientists by that extension, have a creative power. Peer review is one of few checkpoints for controlling that power and ensuring that the created knowledge is trustworthy, valid, and reliable with the highest degree of certainty possible. With the advent of large language models, peer review is becoming more and more important than ever before, since the threat of fake science is ever growing.
Dr. Frandsen believes that reviewers should remember that they are humans and subject to just as many biases as the authors. Reviewers should also remember that both the editors and authors are also human and should act accordingly. Remember to act human, be nice and respectful. Although peer reviewing is an important process that should be taken seriously, he believes it sometimes crosses over into being overly formal and stiff, so remember to be human and have fun with it too.
According to Dr. Frandsen, it is crucial for authors to share their research data. Openness in science, including sharing not only data, but also methods for analysis (for example, code) is vital for quality controlling the process the authors went through. Furthermore, when working with Big Data, often the amount of data is a limiting step. Sharing datasets is a step on the way of solving that problem. Attempts should be made to harmonize data and national ethics committees should provide guidelines for how to handle sensitive information.
(by Lareina Lim, Brad Li)
June, 2024
Emanuele Stirpe
Dr. Emanuele Stirpe is a Pulmonologist at the Hospital of Bolzano-Teaching Hospital of Paracelsus Medical University (PMU), Bolzano-Bozen, Italy. He graduated from University of Rome “Tor Vergata” in Italy in 2008. In 2014, he specialized in Pneumology in the same University with honours. In the first part of his career, he directed his attention mainly to clinical respiratory pharmacology and, at the same time, he focused on interventional pneumology, and he completed his training in this field at the University of Ancona (with Prof. Gasparini) and at the University of Florence (with Prof. Corbetta). Since 2022, he has had responsibility as Head of Interventional Pneumology and contact person for the local Alpha 1 Antitrypsin Deficiency program at the Hospital of Bolzano. His main areas of research interest are new technologies and procedures in Interventional Pneumology and new perspectives on early diagnosis of lung damage in patients with alpha 1 antitrypsin deficiency. Learn more about him here.
Dr. Stirpe reckons that peer review plays a crucial role in the process of creating a new scientific work. It provides a quality-control system by ensuring that the work is subjected to the evaluation and criticism of other experts in the sector before being published. This increases the quality of the work, its originality and avoids the publication of erroneous data. He sees peer review as a moment of growth for both the authors of the work and the reviewers themselves.
In Dr. Stirpe’s opinion, an objective review gives information and an unbiased assessment based on verifiable information. It must be fact-based, impartial, and supported by solid evidence. To make sure that his review is impartial, he follows the following rules: he considers both positive and negative aspects in order to give a balanced judgement. He also tries to clearly explain the reason for his observations by supporting them with scientifically solid data and findings. If he is not completely sure about data or arguments, he necessarily has to document himself.
According to Dr. Stirpe, it is widely recognised that it is important for authors to follow reporting guidelines, such as TREND and CONSORT, to improve the accuracy, clarity, and transparency of scientific publications, which in turn can have a direct impact on patient care. They provide a structured framework to help authors, editors and peer reviewers ensure that research is reported in a complete and accessible manner.
(by Lareina Lim, Brad Li)
August, 2024
Sarah N. Price
Sarah N. Price, PhD, is a postdoctoral fellow in Cancer and Prevention and Control at Wake Forest University School of Medicine where she studies psychosocial and behavioral aspects of cancer survivorship. She earned her doctorate in Psychology from the University of Arizona in Tucson and completed a predoctoral clinical internship in Behavioral Medicine at the Medical University of South Carolina in Charleston. Her program of research focuses on identifying and intervening on modifiable risk factors to improve health outcomes and reduce symptom burden among cancer survivors. She is especially interested in sleep health, lung cancer-specific psychosocial concerns, smoking cessation, and improving access to supportive care. Follow her on ResearchGate or Google Scholar.
“Peer review is an essential pathway through which research findings ultimately become part of the medical literature,” says Dr. Price. In her opinion, most of the reviews she has received have helped her to consider her work and its implications from a different perspective and have improved the quality of the work significantly prior to publication. Ideally, peer review serves as quality-control measure to ensure that the methodology and reporting of the research are accurate, valid, and appropriately rigorous. In practice, however, peer review does not always achieve these ideals due to a lack of transparency, reviewer bias and conflicts of interest, inconsistency in evaluation standards and quality, and reliance on unpaid volunteers, which contributes to the variability in review quality.
Dr. Price reckons that a reviewer should seek to be constructive in their criticism and should treat the authors with human kindness and respect, as they would like to be treated. She tries to adopt an encouraging tone and a goal of helping the authors improve the work and ultimately contributing to scientific integrity. A peer reviewer should possess knowledge on the subject matter and a familiarity with the current research and should conduct a thorough review to understand the major weaknesses rather than getting caught up on superficial stylistic aspects that do not necessarily impact the overall quality or significance of the work. It is also helpful to express suggestions clearly and to include justifications from the literature where appropriate, so that the authors understand the reasons behind the feedback.
“I am motivated to be the kind of productive peer reviewer that I want to review my own work, and to contribute positively to the scientific process. Additionally, I can learn ways to improve my own writing and gain access to the latest advances in the field through the process of reviewing manuscripts,” says Dr. Price.
(by Lareina Lim, Brad Li)
September, 2024
Masaaki Nagano
Masaaki Nagano, MD, PhD, investigates minimally invasive surgery, preoperative marking techniques, and the genomics of lung cancer at the Department of Thoracic Surgery of the National Center for Global Health and Medicine (NCGM). His current project focuses on the effects of virtual-assisted lung mapping with indigo carmine and indocyanine green in sublobar lung resection (jRCTs031220668). He graduated from the University of Tokyo in 2009 and earned his PhD in 2018 after working in the laboratory of Hiroyuki Mano, who discovered ALK fusion in lung cancer. He served as an attending physician at Toranomon Hospital from 2018 to 2020 and the University of Tokyo Hospital from 2020 to 2024. He is currently a physician-in-chief at the NCGM. Learn more about him here.
In Dr. Nagano’ opinion, the most important thing when reviewing papers is to evaluate the manuscript specifically and objectively. Some examples include: What is the hypothesis of the paper? What is known or not known in the field? Did the authors analyze the data correctly? Did they appropriately discuss the results by comparing them with those of previous studies? Does the paper have novelty?
From a reviewer’s perspective, Dr. Nagano points out that sharing the data used in papers is important in terms of credibility. Making the raw data of a study publicly available enables reviewers and other researchers to objectively evaluate the results obtained from the data fairly. In addition, comparing the results of their studies with publicly available data can make their papers more reliable.
“The acquisition of a wide range of up-to-date knowledge in the reviewers’ fields enables them to assist in advancing the science. Furthermore, deep knowledge of statistics is indispensable. An understanding of the data analysis, the appropriateness of the statistical methods, and interpretation of the results, are necessary in reviewing papers,” says Dr. Nagano.
(by Lareina Lim, Brad Li)
December, 2024
Alessio Campisi
Dr. Alessio Campisi is a Consultant in Thoracic Surgery at the University and Hospital Trust, Ospedale Borgo Trento, Verona, Italy. Having performed over 1,500 thoracic surgical procedures, he specializes in minimally invasive and robotic-assisted thoracic surgery, focusing on lung and mediastinal tumor resections and segmentectomy techniques. His academic journey includes an M.D. from the University of Bologna, where he also completed his specialization in thoracic surgery with honors. He has enriched his expertise through fellowships at Shanghai Chest Hospital and the ESTS Robotic School at Thoraxklinik-Heidelberg. His research interests revolve around surgical innovation, particularly in robotic techniques, and he has contributed to over 60 peer-reviewed publications. Dr. Campisi is an active member of international thoracic societies and serves as a reviewer for several leading journals. His work reflects a commitment to advancing precision surgery and improving patient outcomes. Learn more about him here.
CCTS: What are the limitations of the existing peer-review system? What can be done to improve it?
Dr. Campisi: The current peer-review system, while critical to ensuring scientific rigor, faces challenges such as reviewer bias, lack of transparency, and lengthy timelines. Bias can stem from conflicts of interest, personal preferences, or lack of expertise in specific areas. Transparency is another issue; anonymous reviews can sometimes hinder accountability. To improve it, we should implement open peer-review processes, where reviewers and authors are identified, and promote training programs to ensure reviewers are equipped to provide objective and constructive feedback. Incorporating AI tools for initial assessments could also streamline the process, ensuring efficiency without compromising quality.
CCTS: What are the qualities a reviewer should possess?
Dr. Campisi: A reviewer must have a strong foundation in the subject matter, critical thinking skills, and the ability to evaluate research objectively. They should prioritize fairness and provide constructive, actionable feedback. Ethical integrity and adherence to confidentiality are also paramount. Lastly, a reviewer should strive to balance rigor with encouragement, fostering a collaborative atmosphere that supports scientific growth.
CCTS: Is it important for authors to disclose Conflict of Interest (COI)?
Dr. Campisi: Yes, disclosing COI is crucial for maintaining transparency and trust in research. Undisclosed conflicts can compromise the perceived objectivity of the findings, leading to skepticism among peers and the public. While not all COIs directly compromise research integrity, they can create situations where personal or financial interests might unintentionally influence study design, interpretation, or reporting. Disclosing COI enables readers to critically assess the work and ensures accountability, which is vital for scientific progress.
(by Lareina Lim, Brad Li)
