AUTHOR'S PERSPECTIVE

摘要

Unsung heroes of peer review: Think for a moment about all the scientific articles you've peer reviewed throughoutyour career. Do you ever find it challenging to make time to perform the review? Do you worry about your reviews being too picky or lenient? Have authors brushed over your comments without really tackling them? Do you ever wonder why you keep agreeing to peer review articles? With over 2.5 million new scientific papers published each year in more than 28 000 scholarly journals, the importance of peer review cannot be understated. The critiques, recommendations, and authors' responsiveness to them are the driving forces behind scientific quality control. When done well, peer review is the catalyst that enables journals to disseminate valid articles that are destined to have the highest impact for patients.