Peer Review Turnaround Time, Willingness to Review, and Review Timeliness

Like most journals, we at Tobacco Control suffer an ongoing problem of reviewer refusal—it has run at about 30% over the past few years. Our standard letter requests that reviews be submitted within two weeks, and we are wondering whether this might be too onerous and whether we should extend it to three, for example. Is there any evidence (RCTs for example) in the journalology literature about the optimum time to request reviews? I would be interested to hear others' experiences.

Simon Chapman
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It would be very good if the WAME members provide some advice and guidance on this reviewers issue taking into consideration current journalology literature. In the meantime, I suggest to read the interesting reviewers works by Michael L Callaham. You can find a very recent one in Callaham ML, Tercier J (2007) The relationship of previous training and experience of journal peer reviewers to subsequent review quality. PLoS Med 4(1): e40. doi:10.1371/journal.pmed.0040040

I hope my comments will be helpful.

Daniel Limonta
Associate Editor, Journal of Infection in Developing Countries
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Reviewers are given four weeks after they have agreed to the review or two weeks. It depends on the journal’s rate, but the more time the reviewers have, the better the review.

Hnid Karim
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I'm not aware of any true study of the issue above. However, we have looked at our last 15 years of reviews and constructed histograms of when they are submitted, and there is a huge spike in the day or two before the deadline. (We are strict about ours and will "dis-invite" reviewers who are late; those who are chronically late are relegated to a list that is seldom used). Interestingly enough, in years past, we allowed more than 14 days, and then the spike was 1 or 2 days before that deadline. This strongly suggests to me that this is an elastic response; in fact, I wonder if we might not all get better results having a shorter turnaround time. In today's world, allowing 2 weeks just provides enough time for them to forget it.

Refusal of a request to review is a different problem than timeliness; we track that also, but I don't mind too much if a reviewer refuses 30% of requests up front  then turns in the rest of the reviews in a timely fashion with high-quality reviews. After all, these people do a lot of the core work of the journal for free. Some reviewers are so good, and so expert, that even if they turn down 50% of requests it is acceptable. What is not acceptable is the person who says yes, but then never delivers. That makes it difficult for the journal to deliver a timely decision.

Michael Callaham
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The Starling Group (named after British researcher Ernest Starling), convened by the European Medical Research Councils and the BMJ, is currently conducting an international survey of funders and reviewers about grant review. The reviewers' survey includes questions about workload from both journals and funders, and asks about difficulties in balancing both of these against the day job. The data won't directly answer WAME's question about timeliness of editorial review, but we hope to shed some light on compliance.

And, anecdotally, I echo Michael's view that shorter times are better. The BMJ used to ask reviewers to report back in three weeks. Cutting this to two weeks a couple of years ago, if anything increased reviewers' acceptance rates. Most of us can judge whether we can find time for a half or full day's work (or whatever a manuscript really deserves) in the next fortnight, and can more easily say yes or no to a reviewing request and mean it. What you'll be doing in three weeks' time is often harder to predict because what you thought was a nice empty diary tends to fill up pretty fast.

Trish Groves
Deputy editor, BMJ