In 2022, ACR 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.

March, 2022
Ajay Wagh, University of Chicago, USA

March, 2022

Ajay Wagh

Dr. Ajay Wagh, MD, MS, FCCP, DAABIP, serves as an Interventional Pulmonologist and an Assistant Professor of Medicine in the Department of Pulmonary and Critical Care, the University of Chicago, Chicago, USA. Dr. Wagh is focused on developing and using minimally invasive techniques to help manage and palliate lung cancer, chronic respiratory illness, complex airway disorders, and pleural disease. Additionally, he has an interest in the biology of airway epithelial injury and repair in benign lung disease. More information about Dr. Wagh’s can be found here.

A healthy peer review system, according to Dr. Wagh, gives the opportunity for thoughtful and constructive feedback of a manuscript to ensure that the authors’ message is clearly delivered and the content is scientifically sound. A healthy system should avoid/minimize any bias or any type of retaliation. Additionally, a good system would offer timely engagement and responses to ensure prompt feedback.

Under a good system, Dr. Wagh reckons that reviewers should also possess a number of qualities to maximize the effects. A reviewer should be thoughtful, unbiased, prompt, and enthusiastic in offering feedback to scientific colleagues.

On the use of reporting guidelines like CONSORT and PRISMA, Dr. Wagh considers it as an imperative and essential step as it enables readers to understand study design and analysis to assess validity. It helps not only the authors’ own assessments but also the reader’s.

“Peer review is a critical component of science and quality control. I make time to review because I know that it is important to scientific process. Additionally, I hope that the scientific community would offer me the same effort for any manuscript that I submit,” says Dr. Wagh.

(By Brad Li, Eunice X. Xu)