What influences the regional diversity of reviewers: A study of medical and agricultural/biological sciences journals

Abstract

There is evidence of a geographical imbalance of reviewers, leading to concerns about the sustainability of peer review to ensure high-quality, timely publications. This research evaluated articles submitted during 2016 to 149 Wiley-owned journals in two disciplines: medicine (112 journals), and agricultural and biological sciences (37). We compared the reviewer location with the location of the author and the Editor-in-Chief, the size and rank of the journal, and whether the journal had difficulty in obtaining reviews. We found that reviewers mostly came from the USA, but there was a correlation between the reviewer location and the country and region of the Editor-in-Chief and that of the corresponding author. Reviewers were also more likely to accept invitations to review articles when the corresponding author was from their region and were more likely to be positive about such articles. We found no difference between journals of different disciplines and of different rank or size or difficulty in obtaining reviews.