What does "peer-reviewed" actually mean, and why does it matter?
If you've ever heard someone say, "It's a peer-reviewed study," but weren't exactly sure what that means, this video breaks it down in simple terms.
Dr. Tala and clinical neonatologist Dr. Veeral explain how the peer review process works, why research papers go through multiple rounds of expert review, and why publication in top medical journals carries more scientific credibility. They also discuss why not all journals have the same review standards and how peer review differs from textbooks and review articles.
If you're interested in neonatology, pediatrics, medicine, clinical research, or evidence-based practice, this episode is packed with practical insights you can apply immediately.
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---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Dr. Tala is a board-certified neonatologist and has worked in busy level III and IV units for the past 18 years. She has won multiple teaching awards throughout her time as a neonatologist. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
*Disclaimer*: This video is intended for educational purposes only, and while we strive to give the most accurate information, errors may occur. Subsequently, this video should not be a replacement for medical advice.
Hi, I'm Dr. Tala and today I'm absolutely thrilled to be talking to my good friend Dr. Viral Toylia
who is a clinical neonatologist. So thank you so much for being here today. What is the traditional
sense of peer-reviewed? I feel people throw that around a lot but not everybody completely
understands what that means. Yeah, so peer-reviewed is one of the features of the medical literature
that is designed to improve and be self-correcting. So if I have a paper or a paper that we've written
so we've written a couple of papers together, what will happen is that I'll send that paper
to a journal for the journal to decide if they want to publish it. That journal will in turn
find a couple of people that they consider experts in the field to review the study, to review the
manuscript that we've set in, and then give the editor of the journal some feedback on that study
or that manuscript. In many cases what will happen is that the peer reviewers who are experts in the
field will then provide comments to the primary author, to the editor. So they may say to us,
hey this study was a really good job but you didn't look at this specific factor. Or they may
be more critical and they may say you're trying to answer this specific question but the way that
you've asked the question is incorrect or the application of statistics that you've used
is incorrect or the conclusion that you're drawing is not justified by what the findings in the paper
actually are. And then you go back and forth sometimes after the editor gets these peer
review comments back from the other experts in the field, they'll say hey we think that
this paper has too many problems, we don't want to publish it, and then you start the process again in
a different journal. In other cases what happens is the peer reviews come in, it says hey you need
to fix these 10 or 15 things or sometimes 20 or 30 things, you go through and you try to fix them,
you send those comments, the revised study back to the journal, the journal oftentimes will send
it back out to the experts in the field who will then review the revised version of the study
and then provide comments again. Sometimes we've had papers that have gone through four or five
rounds of revisions responding to these experts in the field. In some cases we've had papers that
have gone back in and they found different experts on the second or third time around.
That's the peer review process. So basically just a objective look at the information that's been
put down by different experts that are unattached to the original manuscript basically. That's right.
In this case with up to date it's not externally peer reviewed. That's correct. So peer review tends
to apply to the primary literature. Okay. So it's less helpful in summary literature. Okay. So if you
look at a textbook for instance is not typically peer reviewed. Right. Or if you look at a review
article where they've reviewed the diagnosis or the treatment of a disease, many times those are
not peer reviewed. Yeah. The other thing about peer review that's really important is the quality of
the peer review oftentimes is proportional to how good the journal is. So a journal like New
England Journal or Journal of American Medical Association, those peer reviewers are generally
a lot more particular. They're a lot more specific. And they're generally capturing
from a group of experts that really knows not just the literature but also how to do research. Yes.
Whereas there are some journals on the opposite end of the spectrum, sometimes those are predatory
journals where the peer review is more pro forma. It's kind of anything that comes in gets peer
reviewed. And so peer review quality is not uniform across the board either. Right.
