Peer review time: how late is late in a small medical journal?

Background: Timeliness is an important attribute of peer review because it brings information promptly to its users. This has become even more important with the development of on-line submission and on-line peer review. Small journals usually must rely on regular mail and traditional peer review. We evaluated the review time in a small medical journal outside of mainstream science.

Methods: We analyzed 1,346 editorial requests for manuscript peer review sent from the Croatian Medical Journal to 690 reviewers from February 1998 to December 2001.

Results: Peer reviewer response rate was 78.6% (1,057 of 1,346 requests for review) and median review time was 29 days (95% confidence interval [95% CI]=28-31 days). Of returned reviews, 554 (52.4%) arrived on time (before the deadline established by the editor) and the others arrived late. Median delay was 12 days (95% CI=10-15 days). There was no difference in delay for Croatian- and non-Croatian-authored manuscripts, but more reviews of articles on clinical medicine were delayed than those on public health. More reviews from non-Croatian or male reviewers were never returned to the editors. For reviews that arrived late, those from male reviewers were more delayed than those from female reviewers (median, 13 days, 95% CI=11-15 days vs. median, 8 days, 95% CI=5-12 days, respectively). Logistic regression analysis revealed that odds for reviewer's positive response to an editorial request for manuscript review were greater for female Croatian reviewers, who received up to three review requests.

Conclusions: Peer review time in a small general medical journal may be comparable to review times in larger and more prestigious journals. Choice of reviewers may improve the expediency of peer review: editors from small journals may profit from building and educating local peer reviewers, bearing in mind that female reviewers may provide more expedient reviews.