Abstract
Analysis of Timing of Manuscript Submissions and Assignment of Editors and Reviewers on Editorial Decisions at eLife
Weixin Liang,1 Kyle Mahowald,2 Jennifer Raymond,3 Vamshi Krishna,4 Daniel Smith,4 Dan Jurafsky,1,5 Daniel McFarland,4 James Zou1,6,7
Objective
Editorial decisions can depend on factors, like the timing of submissions or the matching of editors and reviewers, that are independent of the quality of the work. This analysis investigates associations of these and other external factors with editorial outcomes at eLife, a major biomedical journal.
Design
This study analyzed whether timing of submission (weekend vs weekday) was associated with the decision to send manuscripts for external review among senior editors, who can desk-reject submissions; compared peer review manuscript ratings by reviewer volume; and assessed whether submission time of month or year, preceding decisions to reject or review a manuscript, and matching of reviewer to manuscript specialty influenced editorial decisions. Data were analyzed by single variable regression.
Results
Between January 2016 and December 2018 eLife received 23,190 total submissions, 6498 of which were sent for review. Among senior editors (n = 65), proportions of manuscripts sent for external review ranged from 9.6% to 49.3% and were statistically significantly lower on weekends (mean, 24% [SD, 1.3%]) than on weekdays (mean, 29% [SD, 0.6%]; P < .001), an association observed for most senior editors. Average peer reviewer rating (range, 0-1) increased with volume category: mean of 0.453 (SD, 0.003) for 1 to 5 submission reviews; 0.463 (SD, 0.008) for 6 to 10 submissions; and 0.472 (SD, 0.007) for 11 or more submissions, and reviewers’ ratings increased with successive reviews. In a nonquantitative inspection of submission and decision trends, submission time of month or year, preceding decisions to reject or review a manuscript, and matching of reviewer to manuscript specialty did not appear to influence editorial decisions.
Conclusions
This study found a statistically significant association between timing of submission during the week and editorial decisions. Peer reviewer ratings increased with review volume. Submission time of month or year, preceding decisions to reject or review a manuscript, and matching of reviewer to manuscript specialty did not appear to influence editorial decisions.
1Department of Computer Science, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA, wxliang@stanford.edu; 2Department of Linguistics, University of California, Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, CA, USA; 3Department of Neurobiology, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA; 4Graduate School of Education, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA; 5Department of Linguistics, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA; 6Department of Biomedical Data Science, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA; 7Chan-Zuckerberg Biohub, San Francisco, CA, USA
Conflict of Interest Disclosures
None reported.
Funding/Support
This research is supported by National Science Foundation SCISIPBIO (A Science of Science Policy Approach to Analyzing and Innovating the Biomedical Research Enterprise) project 2022435.
Additional Information
We thank Andy Collings and James Gilbert from eLife for sharing the data and providing explanations and eLife’s editorial leadership team for input and suggestions.