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Understanding the peer review endeavor
Author(s) -
Xu Shenmeng,
Zhang Guangyao,
Sun Yao,
Wang Xianwen
Publication year - 2019
Publication title -
proceedings of the association for information science and technology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.193
H-Index - 14
ISSN - 2373-9231
DOI - 10.1002/pra2.26
Subject(s) - gatekeeping , lingua franca , publishing , peer review , scientific writing , scientific publishing , psychology , political science , humanities , law , art , literature
ABSTRACT Peer review plays an essential role in the scholarly publishing life cycle. Using the verified peer review records of researchers on Publons, this study investigated how this scientific endeavor was distributed throughout the world. In addition, we took an initial step toward understanding the length of reviews as a potential indicator of time and effort put into this “scientific gatekeeping” process. The proficiency of English, the scientific Lingua Franca, was found to have a significant effect on the length of reviews. In addition, there was a significant effect of a country's economic development level on review length. Furthermore, we explored a subgroup of reviewers – reviewers in Singapore – in more depth, and found that reviewers in different genders, disciplines, economic and cultural backgrounds wrote reviews of significantly different lengths.