In 2025, mHealth 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.
Justin Kramer, Wake Forest University, USA
Catharina Margaretha van Leersum, Saint Louis University, USA
Justin Kramer
Dr. Justin Kramer is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Family and Community Medicine at Wake Forest University School of Medicine (NC). He is a sociologist by training, earning his PhD from Temple University (PA) and having completed his postdoctoral training in the Department of Health and Kinesiology at Texas A&M University (TX). His research interests focus on the use of digital health interventions in clinical settings, specifically how they might be leveraged to improve care delivery, patient engagement, and clinical workflow efficiencies. Most recently, he collaborated on a research study which developed and pilot-tested a patient-facing app to better assist both patients and care teams in navigating Hospital at Home admission processes. Within the digital health space, Dr. Kramer is also interested in exploring the capacity of mHealth to improve patient health outcomes and potentially mitigate longstanding health disparities which impact many chronic conditions (e.g., hypertension). Learn more about him here.
Dr. Kramer emphasizes that peer review is a crucial element in science, influencing all stages of the research process. Before research begins, it is essential for study protocols and data collection tools to gain Institutional Review Board (IRB) approval. This safeguards the safety, protection, and fair treatment of all participants. Post-study, peer review via journal submissions acts as a gatekeeper, ensuring that published research accurately reports findings. Peer reviewers’ key task, in his opinion, is to carefully examine a study’s research design. They must verify that the methodologies are suitable for achieving research goals and that findings are clearly and unbiasedly presented. This not only serves as a quality-control measure but also offers feedback to authors on unclear or unsupported aspects. In essence, peer review upholds high standards for research dissemination and new knowledge creation.
“Peer review is both rewarding and necessary. It plays a vital role in enhancing the quality of published research and providing useful feedback to improve less polished manuscripts. Contributing to academic conferences or journal reviews is seen as a meaningful way to promote more efficient review processes. Despite the time it takes, more researchers participating in reviews can lead to timelier evaluations,” says Dr. Kramer.
(by Lareina Lim, Brad Li)
Catharina Margaretha van Leersum
Dr. Catharina Margaretha van Leersum, from the Faculty of Humanities at the Open University of the Netherlands, is an expert in human-centered explainable AI with a particular focus on its application in elderly care. Her passion lies in researching at the intersection of medical technology and science and technology studies. She aims to enhance the understanding of AI in society, especially how stakeholders can responsibly integrate AI innovations and incorporate new forms of health data into their daily lives and caregiving. Dr. van Leersum endeavors to achieve this goal while adhering to the principles of open science and involving diverse target groups in research and its dissemination. Insights from stakeholders in society and their real-life use of technologies are crucial for her research. She values collaboration and mutual learning between researchers and non-researchers. To this end, she applies co-creation methods and sets an example for other researchers on how to collaborate with groups that are typically not engaged in research. This approach not only enriches her research but also promotes a more inclusive and practical understanding of AI in the context of elderly care and broader societal applications. Connect with her on LinkedIn.
Dr. van Leersum emphasizes that reviewers should remember their own experiences as authors. She recalls the frustration of receiving reviews from those who seemingly have not read the entire paper and request details already provided. Since authors invest significant time in crafting their work, reviewers are obliged to reciprocate by spending sufficient time and taking the paper seriously. A well-thought-out review, where the reviewer steps into the author's shoes, can reduce the author's sense of defeat. To achieve this, she thoroughly reads papers to confirm if information is truly missing and to understand the paper's flow. She also makes an effort to be specific, indicating the relevant sections or pages for her comments. Additionally, she offers examples to help authors make adjustments and revisions, striving to be clear, precise, and constructive in her reviews.
Acknowledging that bias is inevitable in peer review, Dr. Leersum doesn't believe it's always harmful. She agrees that reviewers should not emphasize our own work in a review, or actually a reviewer should only talk about their own work when completely relevant, but having a certain view on a topic could also assist the authors when this is not incorporated in their paper. She views the review process as a starting point for a debate with the authors. In this context, reviewers can pose questions from their perspective, not to push the authors in a biased direction but to foster a collaborative exchange. Both authors and reviewers may have biases, and through communication, they can learn from each other. Dr. Leersum believes it's acceptable for authors to reject a comment as long as they clearly explain and justify their stance.
Despite the heavy workload of a scientist and doctor, Dr. van Leersum values her profession highly, considering the research opportunities and daily learning experiences invaluable. She says, “The research I can conduct and the things I learn every day are more than worth it. There is always something new and exciting and related to this, doing peer reviews is an opportunity to learn and get engaged in the field. It is often very difficult to find time to thoroughly read papers and that is what you have to do as a reviewer. Thus, if I get an invitation with an appealing title and abstract, I get excited and am willing to allocate time. Sometimes this is time besides all other tasks, sometimes there is a bit more space and it is part of my research hours. Overall, most of the time doing peer reviews is a time well spent in which you can learn from other researchers because as one of the first you can read about new research, and you get the opportunity to assist and ask questions to improve the distribution of relevant outcomes.”
(by Lareina Lim, Brad Li)
