Reviewers: the soul of a scientific journal

Abstract

EDITORIAL IN ThIS ISSuEPeer review system is like democracy: it is absolutely imperfect, but the best available. It allows criticism to articles, suggestions for improvement under different perspectives and allows the editor to make a fairer decision about the future of an article.The reviewer is the soul of a medical journal like International Brazilian Journal of Urology. He/she dictates the quality of publishing, the velocity by which each article reaches the reader, being a voluntary job that takes time. A good reviewer is rapidly identified by different magazines and is overloaded by many requests.A good reviewer is not necessarily famous in his/hers specialty, but a committed person that spends precious time without payment in order to evaluate a paper and to decide if its valuable enough to be published or if it needs improvements and guidance to authors.International Brazilian Journal of Urology has received 641 new submissions in 2016, added to other 275 that were revised and resubmitted. 456 reviewers participated in that task and it is important to nominate, as we have been doing in the past years, the most efficient and more collaborative.We created a formula by which this choice is not subjective and only based on the opinion of the Associated Editors:Reviewer score = (completed revisions/invitations)x R-score Median time consumed for revision The result is multiplied by 100. R-score: given note that each AE gives to each revision (1= bad revision to 3-excelent review)Based on that formula we have elected the 5 most efficient reviewers of 2016 and we specially thanks them for their dedication:

Int Braz J Urol Annual Report - 2017

“…Traditionally, every year, the International Brazilian Journal of Urology evaluates its reviewers and selects the most efficient along the previous year, Evaluation is based on the number of performed reviews, time for conclusion and quality of work ( 1 ).…”