What does ‘peer reviewed research’ mean to NSA?
Having one’s research published in a peer-reviewed journal is usually the global gold standard in the sciences and social sciences. But why is that the case?
In March 2026 the National Seniors Australia (NSA) research team and a University of Melbourne anthropologist published a research paper about older Australians and pets in the peer-reviewed journal Anthrozoös.
The research was based on responses to the 2024 National Seniors Social Survey.
The phrase ‘peer-reviewed journal paper’ is bandied about quite a bit, but many people outside the research world don’t know what it means exactly.
Having one’s research published in a peer-reviewed journal is usually the global gold standard in the sciences and social sciences, signifying work that is of high quality, credibility, and reliability.
But why is that the case? And if it’s that great, why doesn’t NSA do it more often?
In the academic world, a journal is sort of like a magazine but for research papers instead of regular articles. It may come out monthly or less often. Some of the big ones come out weekly.
Each paper in a journal issue is authored by different researchers, working either alone or in groups. So a journal issue gives readers a snapshot of recent research in the field from around the world.
A ‘paper’ is most often the technical write-up of a research project including detailed methods and results. The idea is that, in theory, other researchers can replicate the project and see if they get the same results.
At the very least, the aim is to be 100% transparent about what the researchers did and what resulted so that readers can evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of the project.
Journal papers will also have extensive reference lists that show the researchers have taken account of other people’s research on the topic, have given credit where it’s due, and haven’t ignored anything important.
These conventions have their origins in the seventeenth century, when French and English intellectuals created the first journals to communicate about philosophical and experimental work their peers had undertaken.
Research papers these days will vary in length depending on the discipline and each journal’s rules. For example, papers in the organic chemistry journal Organic Letters have a limit of 2,200 words, while Social Studies of Science allows papers up to 12,000 words.
Because of the high esteem in which journal papers are held, there are consequent benefits to a person’s academic career if they publish more of them. This is likely one reason why the paper with the longest list of authors ever (about the impact of COVID restrictions on cancer surgery) had over 15,000 authors – perhaps everyone needed a professional boost because of the research restrictions COVID had imposed.
Researchers’ careers also benefit if they are listed as the first author on a paper, so author order can be hotly contested.
To get a paper published in a peer-reviewed journal, researchers will write up their research according to the style guide and submit it to the journal editor for consideration. At this stage the paper is called a manuscript because it is not yet published.
The editor then typically invites 2-3 independent experts to thoroughly review the quality of the manuscript.
The reviewers are considered independent because they have not been involved in the research project in any way. But they are considered experts because they have previously published journal papers about their own research on a closely related topic.
This is also why they are considered ‘peers’ – they are professionally similar to the manuscript’s authors and therefore qualified to make judgements about the work.
So ‘peer review’ means your research is thoroughly scrutinised and evaluated by your professional equals.
The reviewers’ identities are usually kept from the manuscript’s authors, and vice versa, to minimise bias and to stop any criticisms from getting personal. Only the editor knows the identities of all parties.
The idea of the peer review process is the peer reviewers check that your methods are appropriate, your conclusions are based on sound evidence, your project is important considering what’s been done before, and so on – they can scrutinise any and every aspect of your work.
They are free to suggest whatever changes they think are appropriate and they judge whether the paper should be published as is, tweaked, completely rewritten, or rejected. The editor then decides what to advise the authors, based on the reports from all the peer reviewers.
If changes are required and the authors are allowed to resubmit, it’s up to them to revise the paper and convince the editor that any shortcomings have been addressed. The revised paper may then be reviewed again, by the same or sometimes by other reviewers.
While scientific journals are a few hundred years old, this version of the peer-review process is actually only a few decades old.
It isn’t perfect and researchers still debate the best (or least worst!) methods for ensuring research is high quality.
But almost all researchers would agree peer-reviewed research is vastly more reliable than writings published without any expert scrutiny, which at worst can lead to the inclusion of false, fraudulent, and plagiarised content with no system of redress.
The peer-review process usually takes months and has been known to take over a year, not including the time it took the researchers to do the research and write the manuscript.
That’s one of the reasons why academic research takes so long to get published. It’s not uncommon for a paper published today to be based on research conducted years ago.
The timeframe is one of the reasons we at NSA don’t submit our work to peer reviewed journals very often.
We are contractually obliged by our funders to publish work quickly and we also want to get our research out there as soon as possible so that research participants can see their contributions in the public domain, and NSA can use the research in our media, policy, and lobbying work.
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For these reasons, we published part of the pets research project in Our Generation soon after the survey was complete, to make the results rapidly accessible to all NSA members.
But we felt that there was a bigger research story to be told from the pet survey question responses and that it was worth taking the time to go through peer review to find out if other experts in the topic thought it was a valuable contribution.
We are honoured that the reviewers did feel the work merited peer-reviewed publication.
The research now has the chance to be top of the reading list for any academic researchers interested in older people and pets, because they can be assured that it has been quality checked by peers and they are therefore more likely to reference it.
More than that, our paper is published in a high-quality journal, Anthrozoös, which has been ranked in the top quartile of anthropology journals.
Not all peer-reviewed journals are equal – some are laxer about the peer-review process or more likely to publish poorer quality research even against the recommendations of peer reviewers.
For this reason, it is extra affirming that our research was accepted by a good journal, and that will also reassure other researchers of its credibility.
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