PEER REVIEW OF COMMISSIONED
STATE-OF-THE-ART PAPERS
Liselotte Højgaard
Ugeskrift for Læger, Trondhjemsgade 9, DK-2100 Copenhagen, Denmark
Objective: To investigate whether peer review of commissioned review articles differed from peer review of spontaneously submitted review articles in the Danish national medical journal, Ugeskrift for Læger. The hypothesis was that the invited papers caused more trouble.
Design: A comparison study of the rejection rates and the "trouble rates" (defined as correspondence by the authors critical to the peer-review process) for all invited review articles in 1995 and 1996 compared to all spontaneously submitted review articles in the same period. A systematic commissioning of articles was initiated in 1995, when a PC-based system of authors and subjects was established in collaboration with the Danish scientific societies. Both types of papers were subject to the same peer review, as the reviewers were unaware whether the articles were commisioned or not.
Results: We received 220 spontaneously submitted review articles in 1995 and 1996, and 93 commissioned review articles in the same period. There were no differences in the type or quality of the peer reviews of the unsolicited and commisioned articles, apart from the latter being more favorable. The rejection rate was 15% for the spontaneously submitted articles and 2% for the invited papers (P< 0.05). The "trouble rates" were 2 of 220 (0.9%) for the spontaneously submitted articles, and 8 of 93 (8.6%) for the commissioned papers (P<.05).
Conclusion: As expected the rejection rate was significantly lower for the commissioned articles compared to the spontaneously submitted review articles. However, as hypothesized, the "trouble rate" was significantly higher for the commissioned articles.
Return to Session Information
