British Medical Journal looking for Patient Reviewers
The British Medical Journal is building a database of patients and patient advocates to review and comment on papers. If you would like to become a Patient Reviewer please go to
http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/bmj http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/bmj and click on "Register here" to create an account. Please complete all of the required information and answer "yes" to the patient reviewer question and you will be added to the database as a patient reviewer.
We will asking patient reviewers to comment on randomised controlled trials and seeking comments on the patient-focused aspects of the study and paper, not methodology or originality - unless they also have that expertise Patient reviewers will be asked to send in their comments within 2 weeks. This is the time frame we give to all reviewers We will not be paying patient reviewers but, in common with all BMJ reviewers (none of whom get paid), they will get a year's free subscription to bmj.com which they can opt to pass on to someone else if they already have access to the journal. We are designing an observational study to evaluate the feasibility and impact of this Patient reviewers who are sent papers will be sent a letter explaining about peer review and what we are seeking from them In Spring 2014 we plan to put all peer reviewers comments on research papers (to which access is open) on line so that the whole archive will be freely available to all.
