SynthesisPloS one2010
A reliability-generalization study of journal peer reviews: a multilevel meta-analysis of inter-rater reliability and its determinants.
Synthesis in PloS one, 2010. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 41 papers, 1 of them a synthesis 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
41 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- Reliability of isokinetic knee strength measurements in children: A systematic review and meta-analysis.PloS one · 2019Pooled it
- Trial
- Editorial and peer review dynamics at elite general science journals.Science advances · 2026Article
- Reviewer recommendations and editorial outcomes in peer review: a longitudinal analysis of agreement and disagreement across review rounds.Research integrity and peer review · 2026Article
- Distortions from Unbiased Noise in Sequential Review: Why the Research Excellence Framework Needs a Noise Audit.Quarterly journal of experimental psychology (2006) · 2026Article
- Evaluating large language models for abstract evaluation tasks: an empirical study.Frontiers in research metrics and analytics · 2026Article
- The effect of manuscript characteristics on quality assessment of scientific manuscripts in psychology.PloS one · 2026Article
- The present and future of peer review: Ideas, interventions, and evidence.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2025Article
- The costs of competition in distributing scarce research funds.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2024Article
- Examining uncertainty in journal peer reviewers' recommendations: a cross-sectional study.Royal Society open science · 2024Article
- Development and Validation of a Scoring Rubric for Editorial Evaluation of Peer-review Quality: A Pilot Study.The western journal of emergency medicine · 2024Article
- How do authors' perceptions of their papers compare with co-authors' perceptions and peer-review decisions?PloS one · 2024Article
- Article
- Older Adults' Perceptions About Using Intelligent Toilet Seats Beyond Traditional Care: Web-Based Interview Survey.JMIR mHealth and uHealth · 2023Article
- How to improve scientific peer review: Four schools of thought.Learned publishing : journal of the Association of Learned and Professional Society Publishers · 2023Article
- Citation counts and journal impact factors do not capture some indicators of research quality in the behavioural and brain sciences.Royal Society open science · 2022Article
- Revisiting the Basic/Applied Science Distinction: The Significance of Urgent Science for Science Funding Policy.Journal for general philosophy of science = Zeitschrift fur allgemeine Wissenschaftstheorie · 2022Article
- Individual versus general structured feedback to improve agreement in grant peer review: a randomized controlled trial.Research integrity and peer review · 2021Article
- Analysis of single comments left for bioRxiv preprints till September 2019.Biochemia medica · 2021Review
- A retrospective analysis of the peer review of more than 75,000 Marie Curie proposals between 2007 and 2018.eLife · 2021Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
3 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
backgroundThis paper presents the first meta-analysis for the inter-rater reliability (IRR) of journal peer reviews. IRR is defined as the extent to which two or more independent reviews of the same scientific document agree. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL
findingsAltogether, 70 reliability coefficients (Cohen's Kappa, intra-class correlation [ICC], and Pearson product-moment correlation [r]) from 48 studies were taken into account in the meta-analysis. The studies were based on a total of 19,443 manuscripts; on average, each study had a sample size of 311 manuscripts (minimum: 28, maximum: 1983). The results of the meta-analysis confirmed the findings of the narrative literature reviews published to date: The level of IRR (mean ICC/r2=.34, mean Cohen's Kappa=.17) was low. To explain the study-to-study variation of the IRR coefficients, meta-regression analyses were calculated using seven covariates. Two covariates that emerged in the meta-regression analyses as statistically significant to gain an approximate homogeneity of the intra-class correlations indicated that, firstly, the more manuscripts that a study is based on, the smaller the reported IRR coefficients are. Secondly, if the information of the rating system for reviewers was reported in a study, then this was associated with a smaller IRR coefficient than if the information was not conveyed. CONCLUSIONS/SIGNIFICANCE: Studies that report a high level of IRR are to be considered less credible than those with a low level of IRR. According to our meta-analysis the IRR of peer assessments is quite limited and needs improvement (e.g., reader system).
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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.