Peer review is an effective screening process to evaluate medical manuscripts
M. Abby, M. D. Massey, S. Galandiuk and H. C. Polk Jr
Department of Surgery, University of Louisville, School of Medicine, KY 40292.
OBJECTIVE--To measure the effectiveness of peer review as a screening
process to evaluate medical manuscripts. DESIGN--Retrospective.
SETTING--The editorial office of the American Journal of Surgery (AJS).
METHOD--A MEDLINE search was conducted of publications from 1984 to 1992
for manuscripts that were identical or similar to those rejected by AJS
between January and December 1989. Manuscripts that were submitted to AJS
by foreign authors were excluded because of the presumed difficulty in
tracking foreign-language publications. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES--The
percentage of manuscripts rejected by AJS that were subsequently published
in journals indexed by MEDLINE, the time from rejection to ultimate
publication, and the journal of publication. The reasons for rejection were
also documented. We assumed that the majority of rejected manuscripts would
be published within 3 years after rejection. RESULTS--One hundred
twenty-five manuscripts submitted by North American authors were rejected
by AJS in 1989, and 62% were not subsequently published in another core
medical journal during the study period. The average duration between
rejection and later publication was 17 months. Of those manuscripts
subsequently published, 54% appeared in general surgical journals,
including 12% that were revised, reevaluated, and later accepted by AJS.
Twenty-nine percent of the rejected manuscripts were published in specialty
medical journals, 10% in state and local journals, and the remainder in
general medical journals. Twenty-eight percent of the authors of rejected
manuscripts had previously and subsequently published manuscripts on very
similar subjects. CONCLUSIONS--Our data indicate that the review process
serves as a sieve and influences whether manuscripts are published in core
medical journals. This was demonstrated by the fact that rejected
manuscripts often were not published in other indexed medical journals.
