Peer reviewers' willingness to review, their recommendations and quality of reviews after the Finnish Medical Journal switched from single-blind to double-blind peer review.

IF 7.2 Q1 ETHICS
Piitu Parmanne, Joonas Laajava, Noora Järvinen, Terttu Harju, Mauri Marttunen, Pertti Saloheimo
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Abstract

Background: There is a power imbalance between authors and reviewers in single-blind peer review. We explored how switching from single-blind to double-blind peer review affected 1) the willingness of experts to review, 2) their publication recommendations, and 3) the quality of review reports.

Methods: The Finnish Medical Journal switched from single-blind to double-blind peer review in September 2017. The proportion of review invitations that resulted in a received review report was counted. The reviewers' recommendations of "accept as is", "minor revision", "major revision" or "reject" were explored. The content of the reviews was assessed by two experienced reviewers using the Review Quality Instrument modified to apply to both original research and review manuscripts. The study material comprised reviews submitted from September 2017 to February 2018. The controls were the reviews submitted between September 2015 and February 2016 and between September 2016 and February 2017. The reviewers' recommendations and the scorings of quality assessments were tested with the Chi square test, and the means of quality assessments with the independent-samples t test.

Results: A total of 118 double-blind first-round reviews of 59 manuscripts were compared with 232 single-blind first-round reviews of 116 manuscripts. The proportion of successful review invitations when reviewing single-blinded was 67%, and when reviewing double-blinded, 66%. When reviewing double-blinded, the reviewers recommended accept as is or minor revision less often than during the control period (59% vs. 73%), and major revision or rejection more often (41% vs 27%, P = 0.010). For the quality assessment, 116 reviews from the double-blind period were compared with 104 reviews conducted between September 2016 and February 2017. On a 1-5 scale (1 poor, 5 excellent), double-blind reviews received higher overall proportion of ratings of 4 and 5 than single-blind reviews (56% vs. 49%, P < 0.001). Means for the overall quality of double-blind reviews were 3.38 (IQR, 3.33-3.44) vs. 3.22 (3.17-3.28; P < 0.001) for single-blind reviews.

Conclusions: The quality of the reviews conducted double-blind was better than of those conducted single-blind. Switching to double-blind review did not alter the reviewers' willingness to review. The reviewers became slightly more critical.

Abstract Image

《芬兰医学杂志》从单盲评审改为双盲评审后,同行评审人的评审意愿、他们的建议和评审质量。
背景:在单盲同行评审中,作者和评审者之间存在权力失衡。我们探讨了从单盲到双盲同行评审的转变如何影响1)专家的评审意愿,2)他们的出版建议,以及3)评审报告的质量。方法:2017年9月,《芬兰医学杂志》从单盲同行评审改为双盲同行评审。统计了收到审查报告的审查邀请的比例。对评审员提出的“照原样接受”、“小修改”、“大修改”或“拒绝”的建议进行了探讨。评审内容由两名经验丰富的评审员使用经修改的评审质量工具进行评估,该工具适用于原始研究和评审手稿。研究材料包括2017年9月至2018年2月提交的综述。对照是2015年9月至2016年2月以及2016年9月和2017年2月之间提交的审查。评审员的建议和质量评估的评分采用卡方检验,质量评估的平均值采用独立样本t检验。结果:对59篇稿件的118篇双盲首轮综述与116篇稿件的232篇单盲首轮综述进行了比较。单盲评审时成功评审邀请的比例为67%,双盲评审时为66%。在双盲评审时,评审员建议接受原样或次要修订的频率低于对照期(59%对73%),接受主要修订或拒绝的频率更高(41%对27%,P = 0.010)。对于质量评估,将双盲期的116篇综述与2016年9月至2017年2月期间进行的104篇综述进行了比较。在1-5分制(1分差,5分优)中,双盲评审获得的4分和5分的总体评分比例高于单盲评审(56%对49%,P 结论:双盲评审的质量优于单盲评审。转为双盲审查并没有改变审查者的审查意愿。评审员们变得更加挑剔了。
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