engleski

What do authors and editors think about peer-review? A cross-sectional study of 12 journals across four disciplines.

Objective: To assess satisfaction of corresponding authors and opinions of handling editors with reviewer-generated reports and reviewer recommendations in a pilot study of 12 Elsevier journals across four disciplines. Design: In a cross-sectional study, we assessed perceptions of authors and manuscript-handling editors regarding manuscript reviews, quality of review reports, and reviewer recommendations from an Elsevier pilot study conducted in May-December 2014. Using convenience sampling of five manuscripts/week by journal administrators, we assessed 1333 reviews and reviewer-recommendations, 1068 editor, and 336 author perceptions on manuscript reviews from different subject areas (Table 1). 324 (41%) manuscripts had a single reviewer, 398 (50%) had two, and 67 (9%) had 3 or more reviewers. Editorial decisions were not available for the current study. Two independent raters used version 3.2 of Review Quality Instrument (RQI) to assess review quality. With the manuscript as the unit of analysis, we used Spearman’s rho to determine associations among: 1) authors' perception of the reviews ; 2) editors' opinions regarding review timeliness ; 3) editors' opinion on review's impact on decision ; 4) review quality, measured by RQI ; and 5) reviewers’ recommendation (accepted, revise, rejected). Results: Authors were highly satisfied with received reviews and editors with review timeliness and influence on their decision (Table 1). We found statistically significant correlations between author satisfaction and review decision (rho=0.432, 95% CI 0.312-0.538, P<0.0001). No association was found between RQI scores and reviewer decisions regardless of number of reviews per manuscript. Inter-rater agreement between reviewers was low (κ=0.233 95% CI 0.097-0.369). We found higher quality reviews in agriculture compared to other disciplines (median=22, IQR 20-26, 95% CI 21-24) vs. median=18, IQR 15-21, 95% CI 17-18).

Manuscript peer review, review quality instrument, perception of peer review

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