Shaukat Ali Jawaid, Masood Jawaid, Maqbool H Jafary.
Characteristics of Reviewers and Quality of Reviews: A retrospective study of Reviewers at Pakistan Journal of Medical Sciences.
Pak J Med Sci Jan ;22(2):101-6.

Objective: To study the characteristics, evaluate the performance of reviewers and quality of their reviews as being helpful for the authors and the editors to make a final decision on the manuscripts. Material and Methods: Information was retrieved from 404 peer review proformas filled in by the Reviewers involving 377 manuscripts from July 2003 to November 2005.The information collected included age, sex, academic affiliation, number of publications, training local or overseas, punctuality, hand written notes or typed, participation in peer review workshops etc. Rating scale of 1-5 (1 meant casual and 5 detailed comments) was used to evaluate their comments regarding originality of manuscripts, comments regarding strong and weak points, tables, usefulness of the manuscript and interpretation of results. Results: A total of sixty eight reviewers were evaluated. Majority of the reviewers 46(67.7%) were between the age of 40-60 years. Only three were female. Four (5.9%) reviewers had more than hundred publications to their credit while twelve (17.6%) had 51-100, thirty two (47%) had between 25-50 and twenty (29.4%) had less than twenty five publications. Fifty one (75%) were affiliated with academic institutions. Those who attended peer review workshops (38 out of 68) did a better review. Eleven (16.2%) did not wish to disclose their identity for various reasons. Based on their consistency and quality of reviews, fifteen reviewers were rated excellent by the Editors which included eight retired medical teachers, thirty three good and twenty as average reviewers. Conclusions and suggestions: Performance of reviewers and quality of their reviews was mostly dependent on their interest in academics. Best reviewers were retired medical teachers personally known to the editors, those in private sector over 60 years of age and those who were exposed to any training programme in peer review system. There is a general tendency among the Editors to overuse efficient, punctual reviewers which must be checked to avoid burn out syndrome which ultimately affects the quality of their reviews. Editors should be consistently on the look out for good quality reviewers to expand their Reviewers Database which will eventually help improve the overall quality of the manuscripts and standard of the journal.

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