Paper Info
Title
"This article is interesting, however": exploring the language use in the peer review comment of articles published in the BMJ
Abstract
Purpose The purpose of this paper is to reveal a symbol - "however" that authors are very interested in, but few research studies pay attention to the existing literature. The authors aim to further insight its function. Design/methodology/approach In this research, the authors selected 3,329 valid comments on articles published in the British Medical Journal (BMJ) from 2015 to 2020 as the research objects. The authors showed the length distribution of reviewers' comments. In what follows, the authors analyzed the general distribution of words in comments and reviewer comments' position to understand reviewers' comments qualitatively in word dimension. Specially, the authors analyzed functions of "however" and "but", words that authors are most concerned with. In addition, the authors also discussed some factors, which may be related to "however," that reflect reviewers' praise through regression analysis. Findings The authors found that there are marked differences in the length of reviewers' comments under different review rounds. By mapping the reviewers' comments to different sections, the authors found that reviewers are deeply concerned to methods section. Adjectives and adverbs in comments written in different sections of the manuscripts also have different characteristics. The authors tried to interpret the turning function of "however" in scientific communication. Its frequency of use is related to reviewers' identities, specifically academic status. More precisely, junior researchers use "however" in praise more frequently than senior researchers do. Research limitations/implications The linguistic feature and function of "however" and "but" in the reviewers' comments of the rejected manuscripts may be different from accepted papers and also worth exploring. Regrettably, the authors cannot obtain the peer review comments of rejected manuscripts. This point may limit the conclusion of the investigation of this article. Originality/value Overall, the survey results revealed some language features of reviewers' comments, which could provide a basis of future endeavors for many reviewers in open peer review (OPR) field. Specially, the authors also put forward an interesting symbol to examine the review comments, "however", for the first time.
Year
DOI
Venue
2022
10.1108/AJIM-06-2021-0172
ASLIB JOURNAL OF INFORMATION MANAGEMENT
Keywords
DocType
Volume
Peer review, Reviewers' comments, Open peer review, Content analysis, However
Journal
74
Issue
ISSN
Citations 
3
2050-3806
0
PageRank 
References 
Authors
0.34
0
7
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Guangyao Zhang100.34
Licheng Wang200.34
Weixi Xie300.34
Furong Shang400.34
Xinlu Xia500.34
Chunlin Jiang600.34
Xianwen Wang722021.59