Signature March/April 2015 - 27

or Committee on Publication Ethics
(COPE) ethical guidelines (18 percent);
or informally as advice from supervisors
(19 percent) and colleagues (16 percent).
Fewer survey respondents indicate that
they have experienced more formal training, participated in a journal's reviewer
mentoring program (4 percent), attended a workshop/seminar on the topic (4
percent), or watched a video or webinar
(3 percent and 2 percent).
When asked what type of training reviewers would find most useful, journal
and publisher guidelines continue to be
ranked highest overall as useful resources
for reviewers. What other training needs
do reviewers have? How confident are
reviewers in their reviewing skills? On
average, reviewers self-assess their skills
at 3.7 out of a possible highest rating of
5. Not surprisingly, those with less reviewing experience rate themselves less
skilled than those with more experience,
and those who have reviewed fewer than
10 papers have an average mean score of
3.4 compared with 4.2 for those reviewing
over 100 papers to date.
Despite expressing relatively high levels
of confidence, 77 percent of reviewers
express an interest in receiving further
training. Demand is particularly strong
(89 percent) among respondents with
five or less years of reviewing experience.
However, established career researchers
also express an interest in training (75
percent of those with six to 10 years of
reviewing experience and 64 percent of
those with 11-15 years of experience.)
Notably, the fundamentals of reviewing
- such as constructing a review report
and providing constructive, useful feedback - consistently elicit the highest
interest across all experience levels. Other
training needs identified by respondents
include:
n■ Handling conflicts of interest
n■ Handling plagiarism issues
n■ Reviewing different article types such
as qualitative, quantitative, statistical,
clinical, or research article
n■ Checking against standards and
guidelines
Responses show some variation between

of reviewers
currently review
for five or more
journals.

disciplines. There is higher demand for
training in how to review a qualitative
research article in the social sciences
and humanities, and greater demand for
training in performing a statistical review,
reviewing a systematic literature review,
reviewing data, and handling re-reviews
in the health and life sciences. In addition, there is specific interest in how to
review a clinical paper from health science
respondents.
There are also some regional differences. Asian reviewers express much higher
demand for an introduction to becoming
a peer reviewer, working with editors, and
reviewing a qualitative research paper
than Western counterparts.

REVIEWER RECOGNITION
Reviewers strongly believe that reviewing
is inadequately acknowledged and should
carry more weight in their institutions'
evaluation process. Moreover, respondents say they would spend more time
reviewing if their institution recognized
the importance of editing and assessing
research and if it was recognized as a
measurable research activity by research
assessment bodies.
But putting institutional recognition
aside, what type of recognition do reviewers want from their journals and publishers? Survey respondents were shown a
list of reward and recognition initiatives
and asked to select the ones that would
make them more likely to accept an invitation to review. Individual initiatives
were grouped into categories - acknowledgements, accreditations, rewards, performance-based rewards, and feedback.
Three of the top six most-selected indi-

vidual initiatives are related to receiving
feedback from the journal on the quality
of their review, learning about the decision outcome, and seeing other reviewer
comments (Table 1).
Next to this, the second most valued
category of reward is acknowledgement,
whether in the printed journal, on the
journal website, or in a personal note
from the editor. Respondents are definitely more interested in receiving feedback and an editor/journal thank-you or
recognition for their reviewing efforts
than cash or in-kind payments, although
receiving access to journal content also
featured highly.
This is consistent with what we have
learned about reviewer motivation. Reviewers are motivated by their desire
to actively participate in their research
community - they want to know that
their contribution has been well received
and was worth the precious time they
spent. The four most preferred reward
and recognition initiatives hold true
across all markets. However, responses
from reviewers in high-growth markets
indicate that acknowledgements in the
journal or on its website are less important than receiving access to papers they
have reviewed or a digital Top Reviewer
badge that could be displayed on personal
and social media websites. Reviewers in
mature markets show a higher preference for discounts or waivers on openaccess fees.

CONCLUSIONS
Reviewer pool. To reduce reviewer
workload issues, journal publishers must
increase the pool by attracting early-career researchers and new markets, including reviewers from high-growth and
emerging regions. However, the findings with regard to the apparent uneven
geographical spread of reviewing burden
suggest that there is also a need to make
sure that the work is spread out evenly.
There may well be process improvements that publishers could make to
better identify and record possible reviewers. Increasing use of customer insight
tools - either those developed in-house
MARCH/APRIL 2016

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Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Signature March/April 2015