Peer Review Statement for Abstracts Submitted for the 2022 Annual Conference for the Nutrition Society of New Zealand ^†

The 2022 Annual Conference for the Nutrition Society of New Zealand took place in Wellington, New Zealand, at Massey University. It was the first in-person conference since 2019 and was attended by approximately 170 delegates.

Abstracts submitted for consideration for the 2022 Annual Conference for the Nutrition Society of New Zealand were each peer reviewed by two independent reviewers. All abstracts were de-identified before review and allocated to reviewers based on their areas of expertise. Abstracts were reviewed with consideration of their scientific content, inclusion of results and data, grammar and formatting and an overall recommendation. Academic editors reviewed abstracts which had low scores.

Details on the peer-review process are listed below.

• In total, 46 abstracts were submitted for consideration;
• 2 abstracts from invited speakers;
• 20 abstracts in the first round of submission;
• 10 late-breaking abstracts in the second round of submission which were considered for posters;
• 2 abstracts were withdrawn prior to the conference.

Two people reviewed each submission. Anonymized abstracts were allocated to reviewers who were not working at the same institution. Reviewers were allocated to abstracts within their areas of expertise.

Abstracts received scores for scientific content, results, grammar, and formatting. An overall recommendation was also provided (excellent, very good, good, or fair). Reviewers also provided brief comments with suggestions for any necessary changes.

A summary of the recommendation scores for the 86 reviews is provided below:

• Excellent  24%;
• Very Good  20%;
• Good     39%;
• Fair     8%;
• Poor    1%.

Abstracts with a score of fair or poor for any of the criteria were also reviewed by the academic editors. Reviewer comments for all abstracts were read by the academic editors, and a list of any suggested edits was sent to each corresponding author.

In total 14 abstracts were accepted with no edits, 12 were accepted with minor edits (spelling, grammar, format, minor detail missing), and 10 were accepted with major edits. The major edits included the addition of content, changes to the title, and rewriting of sentences or conclusions.