[p1esk]

No it's not. Peer review is often done by people have have no clue about what you're doing. And even if they do, not many are motivated to make effort to provide a good review. Source: I received comments from 4 reviewers for my last paper, and not a single one provided any useful feedback (paper's accepted). Two of them simply copy-pasted sentences from the abstract and called it a day.

[bumby]

I've had a similar experience lately and it's frustrating. Literally 1 of 9 reviewers gave meaningful feedback. The rest either had no comment or such vague comments to be useless. Other published papers had comments that just regurgitated the abstract in an effort (I assume) to demonstrate they read the paper. I really wonder if many reviewers just "check the box" so they can say they review for X Journal

[chrisseaton]

> Peer review is often done by people have have no clue about what you're doing.

That's not how I have ever seen peer review done by a reputable conference or journal. Why would they be reviewers if they didn't know the topic?

What do you think the word 'peer' means?

In my field the people I'd ask informally for comment are exactly the same people who would peer review my paper.

[p1esk]

The word “peer” means a random name from the references section in my paper, picked by the editors who themselves are very unlikely to be familiar with my area. Out of 50 references, I think only 5-10 are able to review my work.