In 2024, TRO 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.
January, 2024
Shin-Ichi Miyatake, Osaka Medical and Pharmaceutical University, Japan
February, 2024
Irini Youssef, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, USA
January, 2024
Shin-Ichi Miyatake
Dr. Shin-Ichi Miyatake currently serves as a professor at Kansai Medical BNCT Center in the Osaka Medical and Pharmaceutical University. He is a member of several academic and professional societies, such as the Japan Neurosurgical Society, the Japan Society of Boron Neutron Capture Therapy (BNCT) and the Society of Neuro-Oncology. He was the president of 27th Japanese Society of Neuro-Oncology meeting and 6th Japanese Society of Neutron Capture Therapy meeting in 2009. Now he is a member of the Board of Councilors of ISNCT. His work in BNCT was vital for the development of the therapy in a number of patients. He was the principal investigator of company-lead, phase 1 and 2 trial of accelerator-based BNCT for recurrent malignant gliomas and the principal investigator of investigator-lead phase 2 trial of accelerator-based BNCT for recurrent and refractory high-grade meningiomas. He got the Hatanaka Award from 16th International Congress of Neutron Capture Therapy in 2014.
Dr. Miyatake emphasizes that peer review could help to evaluate manuscripts without any consideration of the author’s background, and improve the quality of the manuscripts.
Dr. Miyatake reckons that reviewers, while reviewing papers, should bear in mind that they should judge the manuscript fairly without any biases. The ability to improve the value of manuscript is also needed.
(by Lareina Lim, Brad Li)
February, 2024
Irini Youssef
Dr. Youssef is a radiation oncologist currently completing a fellowship at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, with a focus on brachytherapeutic procedures. Her research interests are in proton radiation, head and neck and the use of particle therapy to minimize toxicity. She has produced several works reporting on the benefits of using proton radiation in head and neck malignancies to improve toxicity rates.
Dr. Youssef points out that often times, the reviewers do not specialize in the area of the paper they are reviewing, for particularly specialized topics, which could be the limitations of the existing peer-review system.
On the other hand, Dr. Youssef indicates that it is important for authors to disclose Conflicts of Interest (COIs) as these may cause prejudice when reviewing/agreeing with findings.
“In general, I dedicate 1-2 hours of my personal time to research and/or peer review daily,” says Dr. Youssef.
(by Lareina Lim, Brad Li)
