How many manuscripts should I peer review per year?

Abstract

Peer review provides the foundation for the scholarly publishing system. The conventional peer review system consists of using authors of articles as reviewers for other colleagues' manuscripts in a collaborative-basis system. However, authors complain about a theoretical overwhelming number of invitations to peer review. It seems that authors feel that they are invited to review many more manuscripts than they should when taking into account their participation in the scholarly publishing system. The high number of scientific journals and the existence of predatory journals were reported as potential causes of this excessive number of reviews required. In this editorial, we demonstrate that the number of reviewers required to publish a given number of articles depends exclusively on the journals' rejection rate and the number of reviewers intended per manuscript. Several initiatives to overcome the peer review crises are suggested.

Lag times in the publication of network meta-analyses: a survey

“…For instance, the median review time has grown from 85 to 150 days at Nature and from 37 to 125 days for PLoS ONE. 30 31 We found a negligible decrease in publication lag time, which may result from an increasing time devoted to peer reviews 32 being offset by a decreasing online publication time due to the use of early-view and ahead-of-print systems. 33 34 …”

“…36 37 Thus, to maximise the novelty of a review, an update of the search is recommended before submission for publication. 32 This can be performed by rerunning searches for all relevant databases days or weeks before submission. If we consider research topics with high publication rates, search strategies should be updated regularly to allow authors to keep track of newly added studies.…”

“…By subtracting the records found in the original search from the current results (ie, deduplication feature of the reference manager software), only records that were not previously screened will remain in the library. 32 Some empirical guidance on how to update reviews 9 42 and further approaches such as the Grading of Recommendations, Assessment, Development and Evaluations (GRADE), Ottawa method, RAND method, statistical prediction tool and value of information analysis should be increasingly used to better disseminate NMA findings. [41][42][43] Additionally, the evolution of technology enables the conduction of 'live cumulative NMAs' (ie, living metaanalyses), defined as a continual surveillance approach of the literature.…”

Publication speed in pharmacy practice journals: A comparative analysis

“…Although the "climbing upwards" number of existing journals has been blamed for increasing the number of review invitations [45], a recently published mathematical model demonstrated that the total number of reviewers required to publish one paper is inversely related to the acceptance rate, which should increase in parallel to the number of journals. This inverse relationship means that the higher the number of indexed journals, the lower the rejection rate and subsequently the lower the total number of reviewers necessary to publish a given number of articles [46].…”

Authors, peer reviewers, and readers: What is expected from each player in collaborative publishing?

“…Pharmacy Practice published a guide to help determine if a potential article is relevant for an international audience. 11 So, why are researchers compelled to publish what they probably know is an irrelevant article? Again, the scholarly publishing system has been corrupted and converted into a performance-assessment system.…”