Peer-review is the system used to assess the quality of a manuscript before it is published. Independent researchers in the relevant research area assess submitted manuscripts for originality, validity and significance to help editors determine whether the manuscript should be published in their journal. You can read more about the peer-review process here.
Journal of Cardiothoracic Surgery operates a transparent peer-review system, where, if the article is published, the reviewer reports are published online alongside the article under a Creative Commons Attribution License 4.0 but the reviewer is not named.
The benefit of transparent peer review is that it increases transparency. In addition, published reports can serve an educational purpose in helping facilitate training and research into peer review.
Publication of research articles by Journal of Cardiothoracic Surgery is dependent primarily on their scientific validity and coherence as judged by our external expert editors and/or peer reviewers, who will also assess whether the writing is comprehensible and whether the work represents a useful contribution to the field.