In 2022, VATS 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.
December, 2022
Anthony W. Kim, University of Southern California, USA
December, 2022
Anthony W. Kim
Dr. Anthony W. Kim M.D. is the Chief of the Division of Thoracic Surgery and Professor of Clinical Surgery in the Department of Surgery at the Keck School of Medicine of the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, California. He performs routine and complex thoracic operations employing the entire spectrum of approaches ranging from the minimally invasive approaches of thoracoscopic and robotic thoracic surgery to the open approaches. He has been and is an educator and mentor to innumerable trainees and surgeons. He also is a member of several professional associations and has held many leadership positions in these organizations. His research interests include studying thoracic surgery and oncology topics and issues using large datasets. Additionally, he continues to have active collaborations with translational scientists on several of projects. He is an active participant in several clinical trials and also has been part of international steering committees for these studies.
VATS: What do you regard as a healthy peer-review system?
Dr. Kim: A healthy peer-review system is one in which there are reviewers who are willing to provide fair, unbiased, and unprejudiced reviews. The system also should allow for the freedom of the reviewer to provide their honest opinion in a truly anonymous manner with the option for the reviewer to reveal themselves should they desire to do so. The healthy peer-review system also should include some type of mechanism to identify qualified individuals with expertise in the subject matter of the manuscript being reviewed with some ease. This technical issue as well as having a reviewer friendly system in which the reviewers can submit their reviews is important to maintain the vitality of the cohort of the willing individuals selected to review. Strong leadership in the editorial board focusing on maintaining the integrity of the entire review process on both a larger system scale and at the smaller individual reviewer scale is also important in tying together all the other elements of a healthy peer-review system.
VATS: What are the qualities a reviewer should possess?
Dr. Kim: First, reviewers should possess the quality of being educated in the topic in which they are asked to provide the review. The reviewer also should be able to provide their review in a timely manner to facilitate a timely decision by the editorial board. The reviewer also should be willing and able to provide an unbiased opinion of the manuscript based. While unbiased can be interpreted in many ways it, at the least, should include not introducing any perspectives based upon financial or industry ties. It also should include maintaining an objective perspective if a line of investigation of a submitted manuscript overlaps or encroaches in some fashion with the area of expertise of the reviewer. Seeking a balance between being the expert in the topic (hence the invitation to review) with possibly having some strong viewpoints and evaluating the same subject manner with an open mind is critically important. Lastly, and arguably most important, there need to be reviewers who are willing to review. Many individuals who review are the same individuals who submit manuscripts for publication. If investigators anticipate having an appropriate review of their manuscript, then they should participate in reviewing manuscripts to maintain a robust process. Serving on several editorial boards, I observe some authors refusing to review manuscripts yet submitting manuscripts to the same journal expecting a fair and expeditious review, ironically. As one of my former practice partners, Professor Daniel J. Boffa used to say, “if you pull out of the river, you must put into the river.” I believe that this philosophy represents an equitable perspective.
VATS: Peer reviewing is often anonymous and non-profitable, what motivates you to do so?
Dr. Kim: My motivation to participate in the peer-review process is in keeping with staying true to the idea of achieving the editorial review process justice. I enjoy investigating several areas of clinical research and writing about them for both my personal understanding of these topics as well as to contribute to the larger body of scientific evidence. If I expect my submitted manuscripts to undergo a fair and timely review, then I believe I must reciprocate by participating in this same review process. Equally motivating for me has also been the tremendous opportunity to learn about a variety of new topics pertaining to thoracic surgery. I am always impressed by the quality of innovation that is being pursued and described in the many manuscripts I review. Reviewing manuscripts gives me the opportunity to learn about the forthcoming advances in our specialty. I also enjoy the opportunity to either augment or refine my current fund of knowledge through reviewing manuscripts. For me, reviewing manuscripts affords me the opportunity to add greater details or nuances to my existing comprehension of many topics yielding a more well-rounded understanding of these areas. Similarly, peer reviewing also provides me the important opportunity to relearn or review topics. As clinicians, scientists, or academicians, seeing information that we believe we already know can still be valuable as it sometimes comes at times when we are able to interpret this information differently owing to the growing experiences and evolving perspectives we continually acquire.
VATS: Data sharing is prevalent in scientific writing in recent years. Do you think it is crucial for authors to share their research data? And why?
Dr. Kim: Within the rules of maintaining compliance regarding patient privacy, it is reasonable to share data in scientific writing if individual investigators and the organizations they represent can agree upon an honest and fair exchange of data. It is crucial for the authors to share their research data only if it will truly benefit the investigators gaining access to the data. Simply accessing the data without a clear purpose for its use may not be worthwhile or fruitful. Using the exchanged data exclusively for a study without the investigators’ own data (defined however one wants to define it) also is not crucial. Sharing data for the purposes of accumulating a larger cohort to analyze, especially in circumstances where the individual collection of less frequently occurring data would be too arduous or too time consuming, would be one of the better examples of data sharing. Similarly, another excellent use of sharing data can be found when the data exchanged could use for validating another dataset such as that from the requesting investigators.
(By Lareina Lim, Brad Li)
