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Alexander K. C. Leung, FRCPI, FRCP; William Lane M. Robson, MD, FRCPC
Alberta Children's Hospital Calgary

JAMA. 1990;264(24):3142.

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text PDF and any section headings.

To the Editor.—

Reviewers are considered the gatekeepers of science. Based on the recommendations of a reviewer, an editor decides whether a manuscript should be accepted, revised, or rejected. We were astonished to learn from the report by Dr Lock and Ms Smith¹ that the average time spent by a reviewer for assessing an article is less than 2 hours. In our experience, the review of a major article for a peerreviewed journal takes approximately 6 to 10 hours depending on the complexity of the subject.

In the study by Dr Lock and Ms Smith, the reviewers had considerable experience. They reviewed for an average of five journals during the study period. The average number of years that the reviewers had been qualified in medicine was 24, and the average number of years of experience with reviewing was 10. Of the 301 reviewers, 146 (48.5%) were editors, associate editors, or . . . [Full Text PDF of this Article]

Footnotes
Edited by Drummond Rennie, MD, Deputy Editor (West), and Don Riesenberg, MD, Senior Editor.

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