Author: Rosa García-Ruiz – Translation: Erika-Lucia Gonzalez-Carrion

The teamwork is fundamental to achieve the standards of quality of a scientific research. The same occurs in the drafting of the articles in which we will give to know our results of research or study. We need to count with the collaboration of a peer, an equal, a researcher with concerns and similar experience in the publication of scientific articles that also could be considered as friend, i.e., a colleague that will help us to improve our work.

Counting with peer friends means to be able to share with our equals a work in elaboration to be valued in a critical and constructive way. This joint task requires a commitment by both parts:

• The author trusts his or her confidence in the colleague or colleagues that could help to find weak points or errors in the approach of the work.
• The peer friend would analyze with meticulousness the work, putting himself or herself in the place of a reviewer or editor, also of a reader expert in the thematic that contributes substantive improvements to the same.

It is expected, therefore, from the peer friend, a contribution that is extraordinary to the improvement of the work that is going to check, not only highlighting those aspects that require an improvement, but offering key ideas, resources, new approaches or models of information processing that, within a few real limits regarding to the time and effort that the author should devote, being them acceptable and understandable.

Placing in hands of a peer friend our manuscript suppose advancing us to the review of the evaluators of the journals to which we are going to send it. We are going to receive a first review with the improvements already determined that, undoubtedly, will contribute to overcome a first phase of the evaluation by blind pairs.

The review of the peer friend can help us to discover formal errors of the work, methodological errors, lack of clarity in the scientific writing, lagoons in the sources of information referenced, errata in the references of the consulted works, end even could give us important information to improve the first impression of the publishing team regarding to the impact and quality that should have both the title chosen for the work, as the writing of the abstract and the conclusions.

For this, it is advisable, that when we are going to ask for help to our friend colleague we should facilitate him or her next to the manuscript a rubric or checklist, that picks up the feed-back of the information that we need to improve its quality.

The School of Authors of ‘Comunicar’, throughout these months of existence, has published a series of guidelines for the authors to comply with a protocol of action that guarantees the publication of his or her work, in which it is necessary to include the shipping of the same to a peer friend to complete its review: