Join us as we engage with our IJERPH 2023 Outstanding Reviewer Award winner, Dr. Carol Nash, to discuss her scholarly insights and journey as a reviewer for the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health (IJERPH, ISSN: 1660-4601).

Name: Dr. Carol Nash
Affiliation: History of Medicine Program, Department of Psychiatry, Faculty of Medicine, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON M5T 1W7, Canada
Interests: self-directed learning; narrative research; history of medicine; health promotion; bioethics

The following is an interview with Dr. Carol Nash:

1. Can you give us a brief introduction of yourself and the main content of your current research? Additionally, could you share some emerging research directions in this field?
I am a full-time researcher, devoting time to writing articles and reviewing for peer-reviewed journals. I write and review by responding to the invitations I receive from journals. My current research concerns the responses of various appointment-based medical specialties to emergency redeployment during COVID-19. I recently published a comprehensive examination of the reaction of several specialties. I am now writing articles for various journals on the response of individual appointment-based medical specialties during the COVID-19 redeployment. The outcome of each specialty differed. I mention the emerging research directions for this topic in my recent publication: https://www.mdpi.com/2813-7914/1/2/19.

2. When and how did you first become aware of the open access IJERPH journal? How do you think open access impacts scholar communities?
In 2018, the MDPI journal Challenges invited me to review a submission. This manuscript was the first review I did for any MDPI journal. In 2019, I received my first invitation from IJERPH to review an article. By the end of 2019, I had refereed six papers for IJERPH. I cannot speak for scholar communities; I can only speak for myself. How it impacted me was to redirect how I structured my research to fit the requirements of MDPI journals. I am very supportive of research being open to all.

3. Which qualities do you think reviewers need?
To learn what qualities I believe reviewers need, please see my article on this topic in the MDPI journal Publications: https://www.mdpi.com/2304-6775/11/2/32.

4. What are the key factors and aspects that you consider most when reviewing a manuscript?
Again, rather than me providing a short answer here to this question, please read my article: https://www.mdpi.com/2304-6775/11/2/32. It provides the answers.

5. Based on your rich reviewing experience, could you please share the common problems that authors face?
One common problem that authors face regarding the review process is that they often fail to read the review thoroughly, jumping to conclusions concerning their response. When this happens, it prolongs the review process, as the reviewer must ask the authors more than once to make the same changes. Another problem is that authors often neglect to see the value in ensuring that their citations reference both seminal work and current research, demonstrating that the interpretation of the original work cited remains the same. In many cases, the interpretation has changed, requiring that authors provide a history of the term’s evolution. For those authors for whom English is not their first language, submissions are sometimes written in poor English. When the English language usage is difficult to decipher, reviewers are less likely to take up the invitation to do the review, and it takes longer for the author to receive the review. To ensure a review of their work, authors should use an aid, such as Grammarly, to check their English before they submit.

6. What are the advantages of the MDPI review platform in your opinion?
The advantages of the MDPI review platform are as follows: it is standardized for most (but not all) MDPI journals, allows reviewers to examine their past reviews indefinitely, permits reviewers to see the reviews of the other referees of an article once all the reviews are in, and these other reviews are also available in perpetuity.

7. What’s the secret to a happy scientific life? Have you ever encountered any difficulties conducting research, and how did you overcome them?
As a researcher who has (among other topics) focused on burnout in researchers, the secret to a happy scientific life is researching because you want to find out the truth and will not be satisfied until you do. There is a difference between researching because it is fun and researching because you are looking for the truth. If your focus is fun, when work gets hard, you likely give up and will not be happy continuing the research. A researcher driven by the desire for truth is not concerned with what is momentarily fun. What is relevant is being self-directed in your research process based on a passion for finding the truth. An article of mine in the MDPI journal Challenges focuses on the happiest and most self-directed researcher I ever met. Here is a link to that article: https://www.mdpi.com/2078-1547/13/2/45. It gives a more detailed answer to this question.
Regarding whether I have ever encountered any difficulties conducting research, before computers and the internet, my problems when researching were innumerable. In the past, to write an article, a researcher had to have access to the appropriate library and spend hours searching journals and books by hand to find the needed information. Notes were hand-written and then transcribed to the typewriter. The only mechanized part of researching then was that at least I had an electric, rather than manual, typewriter! It was almost impossible to be published as there were few journals, and the time reviewers took to read and comment on the article meant that submissions often took years to complete the acceptance process. Research in those days was agony. The only researchers who could get ahead in this system were those who had enough money to have secretaries and many research assistants to complete the work that was drudgery. Now, with computers, the internet, and so many journals to choose from for publication, one lone researcher can do the work of twenty in the past and have the results published in a tenth of the time it used to take. This time is history’s golden period for research.