ArticlePloS one2010
Editorial peer reviewers' recommendations at a general medical journal: are they reliable and do editors care?
Article in PloS one, 2010. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 42 papers, 2 of them syntheses that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
42 citing papers in PubMed, 2 syntheses or guidelines pooled it.
- Tools used to assess the quality of peer review reports: a methodological systematic review.BMC medical research methodology · 2019Pooled it
- Impact of interventions to improve the quality of peer review of biomedical journals: a systematic review and meta-analysis.BMC medicine · 2016Pooled it
- Reviewer recommendations and editorial outcomes in peer review: a longitudinal analysis of agreement and disagreement across review rounds.Research integrity and peer review · 2026Article
- Librarians and information specialists as methodological peer-reviewers: a case-study of the International Journal of Health Governance.Research integrity and peer review · 2024Article
- Article
- Is novel research worth doing? Evidence from peer review at 49 journals.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2022Article
- Capacity Building in Peer-review: A Student-Led Journal Report.Medical science educator · 2022Article
- Reimagining peer review as an expert elicitation process.BMC research notes · 2022Article
- Keep calm and carry on: moral panic, predatory publishers, peer review, and the emperor's new clothes.Journal of the Medical Library Association : JMLA · 2022Article
- Article
- Article
- Credibility of preprints: an interdisciplinary survey of researchers.Royal Society open science · 2020Article
- Open up: a survey on open and non-anonymized peer reviewing.Research integrity and peer review · 2020Article
- Journal editors' perspectives on the roles and tasks of peer reviewers in biomedical journals: a qualitative study.BMJ open · 2019Article
- Adherence to reporting guidelines increases the number of citations: the argument for including a methodologist in the editorial process and peer-review.BMC medical research methodology · 2019Article
- Influence of peer review on the reporting of primary outcome(s) and statistical analyses of randomised trials.Trials · 2018Article
- A scoping review protocol on the roles and tasks of peer reviewers in the manuscript review process in biomedical journals.BMJ open · 2017Article
- Social behavioural epistemology and the scientific community.Journal of genetics · 2017Article
- Bias in cervical total disc replacement trials.Current reviews in musculoskeletal medicine · 2017Review
- What is open peer review? A systematic review.F1000Research · 2017Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
6 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
backgroundEditorial peer review is universally used but little studied. We examined the relationship between external reviewers' recommendations and the editorial outcome of manuscripts undergoing external peer-review at the Journal of General Internal Medicine (JGIM). METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL
findingsWe examined reviewer recommendations and editors' decisions at JGIM between 2004 and 2008. For manuscripts undergoing peer review, we calculated chance-corrected agreement among reviewers on recommendations to reject versus accept or revise. Using mixed effects logistic regression models, we estimated intra-class correlation coefficients (ICC) at the reviewer and manuscript level. Finally, we examined the probability of rejection in relation to reviewer agreement and disagreement. The 2264 manuscripts sent for external review during the study period received 5881 reviews provided by 2916 reviewers; 28% of reviews recommended rejection. Chance corrected agreement (kappa statistic) on rejection among reviewers was 0.11 (p<.01). In mixed effects models adjusting for study year and manuscript type, the reviewer-level ICC was 0.23 (95% confidence interval [CI], 0.19-0.29) and the manuscript-level ICC was 0.17 (95% CI, 0.12-0.22). The editors' overall rejection rate was 48%: 88% when all reviewers for a manuscript agreed on rejection (7% of manuscripts) and 20% when all reviewers agreed that the manuscript should not be rejected (48% of manuscripts) (p<0.01). CONCLUSIONS/SIGNIFICANCE: Reviewers at JGIM agreed on recommendations to reject vs. accept/revise at levels barely beyond chance, yet editors placed considerable weight on reviewers' recommendations. Efforts are needed to improve the reliability of the peer-review process while helping editors understand the limitations of reviewers' recommendations.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.