The effects of an editor serving as one of the reviewers during the peer-review process

Abstract

Background Publishing in scientific journals is one of the most important ways in which scientists disseminate research to their peers and to the wider public. Pre-publication peer review underpins this process, but peer review is subject to various criticisms and is under pressure from growth in the number of scientific publications. Methods Here we examine an element of the editorial process at eLife, in which the Reviewing Editor usually serves as one of the referees, to see what effect this has on decision times, decision type, and the number of citations. We analysed a dataset of 8,905 research submissions to eLife since June 2012, of which 2,747 were sent for peer review. This subset of 2747 papers was then analysed in detail. Results The Reviewing Editor serving as one of the peer reviewers results in faster decision times on average, with the time to final decision ten days faster for accepted submissions (n=1,405) and five days faster for papers that were rejected after peer review (n=1,099). Moreover, editors acting as reviewers had no effect on whether submissions were accepted or rejected, and a very small (but significant) effect on citation rates. Conclusions An important aspect of eLife's peer-review process is shown to be effective, given that decision times are faster when the Reviewing Editor serves as a reviewer. Other journals hoping to improve decision times could consider adopting a similar approach.

Keywords: decision times; eLife; peer review.

Figure 1.. Decision times are faster when the Reviewing Editor serves as one of the reviewers.

We compare the total time from submission to acceptance and submission to rejection after peer review. Light blue indicates papers submissions where the Reviewing Editor served as one of the peer reviewers, while orange indicates submissions where the Reviewing Editor did not serve as one of the reviewers (i.e., the editors had more of a supervisory role).

Figure 2.. Decision times are faster when the Reviewing Editor serves as one of the reviewers across different rounds of review.

Boxplots showing decision times for different rounds of review, depending on decision type and whether the Reviewing Editor served as one of the reviewers (light blue) or not (orange). Full data available in Table 2.

Figure 3.. Effect of different factors on citation rates.

We compare the effect of different parameters on the log1p citation rate (log(1 + (number of citations/days since paper was published)). The values of the coefficient on the left reflect the citations numbers (as indexed by Scopus) on 29th February, 2016. We now repeat this analysis using more recent citation numbers obtained 11th July 2016 which are the values on the right).

Figure 4.. A decreasing proportion of Reviewing Editors served as one of the reviewers as submission volumes increased.

The average number of papers per editor, and the number of editors willing to act as a reviewer on papers has decreased over time. The total number of papers and the number of active reviewers have both been increasing over time, although the number of active reviewers has not quite kept up with the number of papers.