Interview with Dr. Philip Calder—Biomedicines Exceptional Reviewer 2025

We are thrilled to share the updated Exceptional Reviewers List 2025, a program designed to recognize and honor scholars delivering consistently exceptional review reports to our journal. Committed to fostering rigorous research and promoting knowledge exchange, Biomedicines (ISSN: 2227-9059) recognizes the significant role our reviewers play in maintaining the quality and integrity of published articles. According to surveys conducted in 2024, 92% of our authors rate the peer review as good or excellent, thanks to our pool of excellent reviewers

We spoke with Dr. Philip Calder, one of the Exceptional Reviewers for 2025, to hear about his scientific research experience.

Dr Philip Calder is Professor of nutritional immunology in the Faculty of Medicine, University of Southampton, Southampton, UK. He is an internationally recognised researcher on nutritional immunology and the metabolism and functionality of fatty acids, with an emphasis on the roles of omega-3 fatty acids. His research has both life courses and translational perspectives.

1. Can you share your current research direction and latest progress?

The main focus of my research has been on the functionality of omega-3 fatty acids and the underlying mechanisms of action. While I continue to pursue my interests in marine-sourced omega-3s (EPA and DHA), I am increasingly involved in looking for plant-sourced bioactive fatty acids. A second aspect of my current work is investigating nutritional approaches to mitigate age-related immune decline; this includes interventions acting systemically but also via changes in the gut microbiome.

2. Could you share with us your feelings about winning the award? What does this award mean to your academic career?

Peer review is the foundation of scientific publishing, acting to assure quality, set standards, and educate researchers. I have been actively involved in peer review for scientific journals for many years and see it as an opportunity to provide service to the academic community. Being recognized through this award is wonderful, and I hope it can encourage others to become more involved. 

3. What role do you think reviewers play in the process of paper publication?

Peer reviewers play an essential role in the process of paper publication. As I mentioned already, peer review assures quality, sets standards, and educates researchers. Because peer review is the core element of the assessment of submitted manuscripts, without peer review, there can be no publication.

4. How do you balance the comprehensiveness and efficiency of review? Can you share some specific methods or principles for reviewing?

This is a good question. Peer review provides guidance to the journal to form the basis of the decision that is made about the manuscript’s outcome. Therefore, the review should always provide sufficient information to the author(s) so that they can understand the basis of the journal’s decision and so that they can improve the manuscript. Peer reviews must be clear, professional, polite, and respectful, be thorough with plenty of feedback and guidance, and be critical but constructive. All of this requires quite some investment in time from the peer reviewer, but for me, this investment is in keeping with the importance of the task. Having peer reviewers who know the subject well is really important, but that is becoming increasingly difficult. I think with experience, reviewers become more efficient whilst maintaining the required thoroughness.

5. In your opinion, what key qualities should an excellent manuscript have? From what perspectives will you help authors improve the quality of their papers?

Firstly, all parts of the manuscript are important. The title should be descriptive and catchy but accurate. The abstract should be a summary of all of the manuscript and should contain some key results with a conclusion that is not exaggerated. The abstract is more important than many authors realise, and often insufficient attention is given to getting it right. The introduction does not need to be too long but should present the big challenge, the specific issue and what is known and not known, the research gaps, and what the research does to address these. It should conclude with a hypothesis or research objectives. The methods section should contain enough detail to replicate the research and for the reader to thoroughly evaluate and interpret the findings presented; this is often a failing. The results should clearly present the data in well-formatted figures and tables with well-written and accurate support from the text. Results must be written so that they can be understood, evaluated, and interpreted. Organisation is important here too: the order (“flow”) of information must help the reader to follow the author’s narrative. The discussion section is often the most difficult to write. Its role is to summarise, interpret, and place findings in the context of the existing literature, asking, for example, what is new, what agrees/disagrees with what is already known, and why? It should describe the strengths and limitations of the research. The discussion should end with a conclusion: this is the conclusion from the research and new ideas and results should not be introduced.

6. How do you hope that journals and publishers can further support reviewers’ work?

With more manuscripts being submitted and more papers being published, peer review is becoming more difficult. Strategies like publishing names of peer reviewers, logging peer reviews and linking them to ORCiD, and providing awards to peer reviewers are excellent because they provide some recognition.

7. Please briefly describe your experience with our services and journals so far.

I have published papers in several MDPI journals including Nutrients, International Journal of Molecular Sciences, Marine Drugs, Molecules, Biology, and Foods. My experience as an author has been good with thorough peer review and with very efficient handling of manuscripts. I have also reviewed a lot for MDPI journals, most often for Nutrients but also for several others.