Effect on the Quality of Peer Review of Blinding Reviewers and Asking Them to Sign Their Reports

Article Abstract:

Requiring reviewers of manuscripts to sign their reviews and eliminating the names of the authors does not appear to improve the peer review process. Researchers introduced 8 areas of weakness in design, analysis, or interpretation into a manuscript already accepted for publication and sent it to 221 reviewers. Some of the reviewers did not know the identity of the authors and some were asked to sign their review. There was no significant difference between the groups in the number of flaws identified.

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US and Non-US Submissions

Article Abstract:

There appears to be a bias in favor of publishing manuscripts by US authors even when the reviewers are not from the US. Editors at the journal Gastroenterology sent all manuscripts received in 1995 and 1996 to reviewers, including non-US reviewers. Non-US manuscripts were similarly rated by both US and non-US reviewers. However, US manuscripts tended to be rated more highly. Non-US reviewers rated them higher than non-US manuscripts and US reviewers rated them much more highly than non-US manuscripts.

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What Makes a Good Reviewer and a Good Review for a General Medical Journal?

Article Abstract:

There appear to be no characteristics that make a scientist a good reviewer except a background in statistics or epidemiology. This was the conclusion of a study of the reviews of 420 manuscripts by two editors and one of the authors using a seven-item scale. Except for training in statistics or epidemiology, no consistent factor was linked to a good-quality review. Editors may have to evaluate all new reviewers and continue to use those who produce good-quality reviews.

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