In 2024, CCTS 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.
February, 2024
Sujith V Cherian, Lyndon B Johnson Hospital, USA
February, 2024
Sujith V Cherian
Sujith V Cherian, MD, FCCP, DAABIP, is Director of Interventional Pulmonology and Pleural diseases, Lyndon B Johnson Hospital and Associate Professor in Divisions of Critical Care, Pulmonary and Sleep Medicine, University of Texas Health-McGovern Medical School, Houston, Texas. Dr. Cherian earned his medical degree at the Government Medical College, Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala, India, following which he completed his residency training in Internal Medicine at the SUNY Upstate Medical University. He then did his fellowship in pulmonary and critical care medicine and interventional pulmonology at the University of Texas Health-McGovern Medical School and UT MD Anderson Cancer Center. His research area covers pulmonary diseases, pleural diseases, medical thoracoscopy, interventional pulmonology in resource limited settings, and rare lung diseases. His recently co-edited a book on Rare Lung diseases, published by Taylor and Francis publishers, came out in print in March 2023. His ongoing projects are Predictors for spontaneous pleurodesis with indwelling pleural catheters for malignant pleural effusions; Medical thoracoscopy in resource limited settings. Connect with him on LinkedIn.
Dr. Cherian reckons that peer review forms the cornerstone in medical literature. Good peer review is essential in any form of medical literature, be it case reports, images, review article, or original articles. While it not only helps improve quality and assess the suitability for publication, but it also helps to improve the credibility of the journal.
In Dr. Cherian’s opinion, some degree of bias is inevitable in any peer review, and the fundamental basis of a healthy peer-review system should aim to fully minimize this as possible. Blind peer review done by at least 2-3 reviewers helps minimize this and should be normal components of a healthy peer-review system. Moreover, he thinks that meaningful peer review should involve a good understanding of the authors’ intent, constructive criticism and more than just superficial correction of grammatical mistakes. Within this context, if English is not the author’s native language, then a review by a native English speaker would be helpful to bring out the intended meaning. It is necessary that novice authors are given value, with the consideration that every reviewer or medical expert started out in this fashion at some point in their career. It is within this realm that he would say constructive criticism to bring the best work forward and subsequently an excellent manuscript would be of the utmost importance.
“I am absolutely honoured to review for the CCTS and when journals ask me to peer review, I feel it is a testament that they consider my publications and research of significant value. Along the same lines, there is always a lot that I learn when I perform peer review, as it may be highlighting new advances in the field or unusual or rare aspects of diseases, which overall help me to be a better clinician. Providing timely peer reviews is extremely important and hence committing to more than two journals at any time should be strongly discouraged, in my opinion,” says Dr. Cherian.
(by Lareina Lim, Brad Li)
