Rates of editor‐authored manuscripts among urology journals using blinded or non‐blinded review

Abstract

We compared publication rates of editor‐authored publications between journals that do not blind peer reviewers to author identity with one that does. Our hypothesis was that the if the identity of editors as authors is known to peer reviewers this may potentially bias the recommendation for publication. To do this, we queried Scopus for all publications from five top urology journals from 2013 to 2018, and linked them to a database of editors. Poisson regression analysis was used to compare publication rates of manuscripts with at least one editor as author between blinded journals and a non‐blinded journal. In separate analyses, we compared publication frequency before and after authors became editors and the frequency with which articles were cited. We found that the adjusted rate ratio of editor‐authored manuscripts comparing the non‐blinded journal to the blinded journal was 5.4 (95% CI 3.8–7.6) for ‘total publications’, and 1.9 (95% CI 1.5–2.2) among ‘articles only’. Median citation frequency was slightly higher among articles written by editors compared with non‐editors at 11 (3–26) versus 7 (2–16) (p < 0.001). We concluded that the blinded journal had a smaller representation of their editors as authors of their manuscripts, compared with the non‐blinded journals.