Hospital Pediatrics ’ Commitment to Growing Our Field’s Peer Reviewer Pool

For Hospital Pediatrics as for science writ large, peer review is the engine that drives discovery and pushes us closer to scientific truth. Our journal is entirely dependent on the time and wisdom of our reviewer pool, and we appreciate that this group is doing unpaid work that competes with increasingly full portfolios of clinical and academic work. We could not be more grateful for and appreciative of our peer reviewers.For us to succeed and grow as a journal (and one that has seen our submissions double over the last 5 years) we need to ensure our reviewer pool is continuously growing. Over our 14-year history, we have always welcomed fellows and early-career faculty to join our reviewer pool, although perhaps we have not shared that message as clearly or widely as we might. We continue to encourage trainees and early-career faculty to reach out to us if they are interested in becoming peer reviewers. It is helpful if people have local mentors at their institution, as it can be a challenge for us to do mentor “match-making,” but we are committed to do this if new reviewers do not have options at their institution. We were all new reviewers once and benefited tremendously from the mentors that gave their time to help orient us and the journal editors who gave us a shot. We also encourage invited reviewers to involve early-career faculty or trainees in a supervised co-review and to share the contributors’ names so we can credit them appropriately and then welcome them to our reviewer pool. Additionally, we commonly find fellows and junior faculty among our best reviewers, and we hence encourage a “go before you feel fully ready approach” to independent peer review. While keeping to our double-blind peer review process we ensure that reviewers always receive the decision email so that they can reflect on feedback shared by the other peer reviewer(s) and our editorial team.We were excited to publish in this issue a Perspective piece by Luke and colleagues that describes a model of group peer mentorship through which the journal has partnered with the Pediatric Hospital Medicine (PHM) fellowship at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia the last several years.1 As a journal, we benefit substantially from this process that brings together multiple new and less experienced reviewers in a 3-year fellowship that pairs them with experienced mentors. We are also working with a group in the national PHM fellows leadership to test a fully virtual model of group peer mentorship that would bring together fellows at multiple programs throughout the country to provide an orientation to peer review. We would be delighted to pursue similar models with other programs or teams if helpful.The magic of peer review, and why we continue to recommend participation in peer review to our mentees, is that in critiquing a colleague’s original science, one is forced to confront questions on framing, novelty, and even methodological decisions that can be tough for us to recognize as clearly in our own writing.2,3 Participation in peer review hence helps grow better writers and scientists, which benefits Hospital Pediatrics and the field quite directly with stronger research findings and a better evidence base for clinicians, patients, and families.We will continue to look for opportunities to support our newer reviewers. If you have an idea or would like to make sure you are on our reviewer list, please do not hesitate to reach out. It is a quick process to sign up on our website, although do please add 2–5 expertise terms that for trainees may better be thought of as types of research and content areas where you would most like to review (https://submit-hospitalpediatrics.aappublications.org). We are also always happy to receive emails and can then flag you in our system as an interested reviewer. We could not be more grateful for the time and expertise of our peer reviewers, and we are thrilled to continue to onboard more wonderful colleagues into peer review.