Why do peer reviewers decline to review manuscripts? A study of reviewer invitation responses

Willis, Michael

doi:10.1002/leap.1006

Cited by 52 publications

(43 citation statements)

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“…The second reason was that the paper did not fall within their area of expertise. The proportion was higher than in another study (less than 5%) (Willis 2016). In order to improve the adequate selection of reviewers it is important that they provide accurate information about their areas of expertise, and also the editors need to respect reviewers' selfdeclaration of expertise.…”

Section: Reasons For Declining a Request To Review By Sexmentioning

confidence: 70%

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Acceptance or decline of requests to review manuscripts: A gender-based approach from a public health journal

Domínguez-Berjón

Godoy

Ruano-Raviña

et al. 2018

Accountability in Research

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Peer review in the scientific publication is widely used as a method to identify valuable knowledge. Editors have the task of selecting appropriate reviewers. We assessed the reasons given by potential reviewers for declining a request to review, and the factors associated with acceptance, taking into account the difference in the sex of the reviewer. This is a descriptive study of the review requests from a public health journal (Gaceta Sanitaria) with an enforced gender policy. The dependent variables were requests, response to requests, reasons potential reviewers gave for declining requests and time to review. We carried out a descriptive analysis of these indicators and applied logistic regression to analyze factors (professional and research/review experience) associated with having done at least one review in 2014-2015. Results were stratified by sex. Journal editors sent 1,775 requests to 773 potential reviewers; 52.3% of whom reviewed at least one manuscript. Of the 396 declined requests (22.3%), the most common reasons were lack of time and of experience (88.1%). No differences were observed by sex. In the multivariate analysis, having reviewed for the journal in previous years showed the strongest association with acceptance. Specific analyses of data on requests reviewers may be useful for improving the acceptance rates to review. This study did not show gender differences in several indicators of the reviewing process.

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Section: Reasons For Declining a Request To Review By Sexmentioning

confidence: 70%

“…Of those who declined to review the main reason was lack of time, similar to other studies (Tite and Schroter 2007) (Willis 2016). The second reason was that the paper did not fall within their area of expertise.…”

Section: Reasons For Declining a Request To Review By Sexmentioning

confidence: 85%

Acceptance or decline of requests to review manuscripts: A gender-based approach from a public health journal

Domínguez-Berjón

Godoy

Ruano-Raviña

et al. 2018

Accountability in Research

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“…Despite this, there are few reviewers available to review and a general impression of low review rates [12], a pattern that is not explained by reviewer fatigue [10]. It is widely believed that a lack of incentives to review, coupled with the high workloads of academics is responsible for high rates of declines to review [11,22]. Whether they be financial in the form of direct payment or publication vouchers for open access journals [23], or with express allowance for reviewing in workload models [24][25][26], employers and publishers alike should facilitate reviews to rectify this.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

How Many Papers Should Scientists Be Reviewing? An Analysis Using Verified Peer Review Reports

Raoult

2020

Publications

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The current peer review system is under stress from ever increasing numbers of publications, the proliferation of open-access journals and an apparent difficulty in obtaining high-quality reviews in due time. At its core, this issue may be caused by scientists insufficiently prioritising reviewing. Perhaps this low prioritisation is due to a lack of understanding on how many reviews need to be conducted by researchers to balance the peer review process. I obtained verified peer review data from 142 journals across 12 research fields, for a total of over 300,000 reviews and over 100,000 publications, to determine an estimate of the numbers of reviews required per publication per field. I then used this value in relation to the mean numbers of authors per publication per field to highlight a ‘review ratio’: the expected minimum number of publications an author in their field should review to balance their input (publications) into the peer review process. On average, 3.49 ± 1.45 (SD) reviews were required for each scientific publication, and the estimated review ratio across all fields was 0.74 ± 0.46 (SD) reviews per paper published per author. Since these are conservative estimates, I recommend scientists aim to conduct at least one review per publication they produce. This should ensure that the peer review system continues to function as intended.

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“…There are limited studies on why reviewers decline to review. Willis () studied reviewer invitation responses and he concluded that the main reason why reviewers decline is lack of time. This is the same reason that some of the JSE reviewers who declined explained by sending e‐mails to the editorial office.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Should authors suggest reviewers? A comparative study of the performance of author‐suggested and editor‐selected reviewers at a biological journal

Yan

2018

Learned Publishing

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To evaluate peer review of author‐suggested reviewers (Ra), this research compared them with editor‐selected reviewers (Re) using 1‐year data collected from Journal of Systematics and Evolution. The results indicated that (1) Ra responded more positively than Re, that is, accepted invitations to review more often, more likely to suggest alternative reviewers, and less likely to neglect a review invitation; (2) there was no statistically significant difference in timeliness between Ra and Re; (3) editors rated Re reviews of higher quality than Ra reviews, but the word count length of these reviews did not differ statistically; (4) Ra made more favourable publication recommendations than Re; and (5) Ra were more often based in the country of the authors than Re, and this correlated with the location effect on reviewer response and publication recommendations. These results suggest that authors should be encouraged to suggest reviewers. However, in terms of policy or procedure based on the results of this study, journals/editors should collect and consult at least one review from other sources than author suggested, and when reviewers nominated by authors are considered, priority should be given to those with different locations from the authors.

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Why do peer reviewers decline to review manuscripts? A study of reviewer invitation responses

Cited by 52 publications

References 1 publication

Acceptance or decline of requests to review manuscripts: A gender-based approach from a public health journal

Acceptance or decline of requests to review manuscripts: A gender-based approach from a public health journal

How Many Papers Should Scientists Be Reviewing? An Analysis Using Verified Peer Review Reports

Should authors suggest reviewers? A comparative study of the performance of author‐suggested and editor‐selected reviewers at a biological journal

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