It’s Peer Review Week this week (15th-19th September 2025), and, here in FERG, we are big advocates of the importance of peer review! Peer review is one of the most vital pillars upholding scientific rigour and excellence, but it takes a community to keep it alive! Alongside encouraging and supporting one another to engage in peer review, we’ve done some collaborative peer review in our group meetings and even discussed how AI can/should/shouldn’t feature in the process. This is particularly pertinent since the Peer Review Week theme this year is “Rethinking Peer Review in the AI Era”!
More recently, wearing his Editor-in-Chief of Agricultural and Forest Entomology hat, Jordan ran a peer review workshop at this year’s Royal Entomological Society Ento conference. The aim of the workshop was to demystify the process, provide some tips and tricks for those looking to start and deliver some light practice through some short mock papers. Input and discussions with other editors of RES journals provided a range of perspectives on how to get involved in peer review, what best practice reviewing looks like and what to expect throughout the process. This also helped advertise the future launch of a Peer Review College for Agricultural and Forest Entomology, which has already gained a lot of interest!
We hope that peer reviewers everywhere can celebrate this week and, despite the trials and tribulations involved in the process, recognise the importance and value of their contributions to upholding sound science!
Foraging Ecology Research Group 