Peer Review Week is here! This year’s theme, “Peer Review Capacity: Volume, Speed and Quality,” reflects the growing pressures facing the research landscape as submission volumes continue to increase, and highlights the vital role reviewers play in maintaining high standards.
To mark the occasion, we’re shining a spotlight on Professor Nikita Gamper (University of Leeds, UK), one of our 2025 Exceptional Referees for The Journal of Physiology. Nikita distinguished himself through the quality, volume, and timeliness of his reviews.
How did you first get involved with the Physiological Society’s journals?
I first got involved as an author. Working as a postdoc in the ion channel physiology field (first in Germany and then in the USA), I came to know The Journal of Physiology as one of the major and most prestigious publishing platforms for this field of study. Known for the series of papers on action potentials by Hodgkin and Huxley, this was always a home for rigorous electrophysiology.
After publishing a few papers, The Journal of Physiology started to (occasionally) ask me to review manuscripts for them.
What have you enjoyed most in your role as a peer reviewer?
I think the most rewarding aspect of reviewing a paper in your field is being the first to learn about new discoveries by your peers.
Another important aspect is that by scrutinising the evidence presented in a manuscript you are reviewing, you sometimes can come up with ideas and experimental suggestions that eventually can strengthen the final version of the paper; thus, in some way, you are becoming a part of the discovery process.
I also have grown to appreciate this type of input while revising my own manuscripts, reviewed by others. Sometimes it requires eating your pride.
What excites you most about the field of physiology at the moment?
I am a physiologist, and I am fascinated with the discipline that enables us to uncover basic principles of life and develop an understanding of how a living being works.
Over recent decades, several technological breakthroughs have enabled us to see inside a living organism with unprecedented resolution and precision (i.e., super-resolution and cryo-electron microscopy), to edit genes, or to perform single-cell ‘omics’. These and other emerging technologies, together with enhanced computational capabilities and AI, allow a physiologist to ask questions that were not possible to ask before. This is exciting!
What advice would you give to anyone considering becoming a peer reviewer?
Peer review of papers and grant applications is an essential part of academic research, and everyone should engage with it. For those who are new to peer review, I would suggest revisiting reviews of your own papers and analysing these in terms of what was most useful to you as an author, and then try to build your comments on that basis. Do not compromise on rigour but aim at identifying what can be reasonably done to improve the study. And never be rude or condescending to your authors.
Interested in Peer Review?
If you would like to follow in Nikita’s footsteps and contribute to the discipline of physiology while gaining a front-row seat to the latest discoveries in your field, we encourage you to join our cohort of peer reviewers.
More about Nikita Gamper
Nikita Gamper is a neuroscientist and biophysicist with interests in neuronal communication, intracellular signalling and mechanisms of pain transmission. He graduated in Biology/Biochemistry from the St. Petersburg State University, Russia, in 1995. In 1999, he obtained a PhD in Physiology from the Sechenov Institute of Evolutionary Physiology and Biochemistry (Russian Academy of Science; St Petersburg, Russia). After postdoctoral work at Tubingen University, Germany, and at the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio, USA, he joined the Faculty of Biological Sciences at the University of Leeds, where he is currently a professor of Neuroscience. In 2011, he accepted a position as an Adjunct Professor of Pharmacology at the Department of Pharmacology, Hebei Medical University (Shijiazhuang, China), where he currently leads a small research group as well. Nikita’s research (both in the UK and in China) is focused on biophysical principles of neuronal communication and on the regulation of ion channels that control or influence excitability of peripheral ‘pain’ neurons. He is also interested in the modulation of different neuronal ion channels by G protein-coupled receptors (GPSRs) and in localised GPCR signalling in sensory neurons.