EVALUATION OF THREE-STEP
REVIEWING PROCESS OF THREE
CHINESE PEER-REVIEWED JOURNALS
Liu Kelan
Chinese Medical Association, 42 Dongsi Xidajie, Beijing 100710, China
Objective: To ensure the academic quality of peer-reviewed journals of the Chinese Medical Association, we apply a 3-step review process (first review by editors, second review by experts, and third review by editorial board) to the submitted manuscripts. The objective of this study was to evaluate the importance and reasonableness of the 3-step review process.
Design: We collected and analyzed the reviewers' suggestions and comments for the Chinese Journal of Internal Medicine, Chinese Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology, and Chinese Journal of Pediatrics. For those not accepted, we analyzed the number of manuscripts that were not accepted during the first, second, and third reviewing processes, respectively, and manuscript return rates. For published manuscripts, we analyzed the reviewing times, the reviewing duration, and the number of suggestions in the reviewing list. The coincidence rates of accepted and not accepted manuscripts were calculated to evaluate the reviewing quality.
Results: A total of 2,837 manuscripts for Chinese Journal of Internal Medicine, 2179 manuscripts for Chinese Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology, and 3,090 manuscripts for Chinese Journal of Pediatrics were received. Sixty-two percent of them entered the second reviewing process. Thirty-eight percent of the manuscripts were sent back during the first reviewing process, 24% during second reviewing, and 9% during third reviewing. Twelve percent of all manuscripts were published within a year. Taking the original article as an example, the first and second review processes each took 17 days. An average of 7 items of suggestions were raised in the review. The coincidence rates of the first, second, and third times of revisions during the second reviewing process were 96.8%, 99.4%, and 100%, respectively, for the published papers and 43.0%, 87.7%, and 99.8%, respectively, for the returned papers.
Conclusions: The first reviewing process provides fundamental information, the second reviewing is the key process, and the third reviewing makes the final decision. They are interdependent. The coincidence rate of accepted papers suggests that the second reviewing is not enough. For a purpose of selecting papers with high quality, repeated review is recommended. Appropriate proportion of manuscripts circulated in each step should be better controlled.
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