Peer Review Week 2020

Dear Victor Norberto,

Peer Review Week is the annual celebration of the importance of peer review, running Sep 21–25, 2020. The theme this year is trust in peer review, a particularly appropriate focus during the COVID-19 pandemic, as highlighted in this week's Editorial.

Science is a powerful and positive force in society; it shapes the present, and it guides our future. Politicians and policy makers rely on published research at critical moments of crises and emergency to guide their actions. And peer review remains essential to the scientific publishing process. It binds authors, editors, reviewers, and readers together, and helps to build trust between them.

We are extremely grateful to our peer reviewers for their expertise, time, wisdom, and willingness to provide constructive criticism, helping us select papers to publish and assist authors in improving their manuscripts.

To coincide with Peer Review Week 2020, we have created a new online resource for a broad audience to explain our editorial processes and policies. Additionally, we have illustrated the journey of a paper through our system as an infographic, outlining our different types of papers, such as Comments, Editorials, news items, and letters, and what can be concluded from them. We have also recorded a podcast with Richard Horton, Editor-in-Chief of The Lancet, discussing the past, present, and future of scientific publishing in light of COVID-19.

The Lancet Global Health and The Lancet Neurology have marked Peer Review Week 2020 with Comments in their journals thanking peer reviewers for their dedication to the advancement of science and medicine through helping us to identify the most robust and impactful work.

This pandemic has had an enormous effect on collaborative, adaptive, and rapid research, rapid publication of important findings and scientific ideas, and
public interest in and scrutiny of research and science. If we can continue to work together to strengthen research and trust in science with the ultimate goal of using the best science for better lives, then the pandemic could have an unexpected positive side-effect.

Yours sincerely,

The Lancet family of journals