Peer reviewers of academic journals: Who is responsible for our professional literature

Abstract

Scholarly journals provide a record of the research, issues, and concerns of a field. Authors have their names associated with their individual articles, while editors are connected with a publication. However, there is another group of individuals who are often left out of the record, although their contributions are just as critical in the formation of scholarly journals. This article will take a look at this group of peer reviewers, to provide demographic data as well as understanding for the reasons individuals take on the duty of peer reviewer. © 2013 Mary Francis, Attribution-NonCommercial (http://creativecommons org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/) CC BY-NC.