With great power comes great responsibility: the importance of rejection, power, and editors in the practice of scientific publishing.

Peer review is an important element of scientific communication but deserves quantitative examination. We used data from the handling service manuscript Central for ten mid-tier ecology and evolution journals to test whether number of external reviews completed improved citation rates for all accepted manuscripts. Contrary to a previous study examining this issue using resubmission data as a proxy for reviews, we show that citation rates of manuscripts do not correlate with the number of individuals that provided reviews. Importantly, externally-reviewed papers do not outperform editor-only reviewed published papers in terms of visibility within a 5-year citation window. These findings suggest that in many instances editors can be all that is needed to review papers (or at least conduct the critical first review to assess general suitability) if the purpose of peer review is to primarily filter and that journals can consider reducing the number of referees associated with reviewing ecology and evolution papers.

Systematic variation in reviewer practice according to country and gender in the field of ecology and evolution.

The characteristics of referees and the potential subsequent effects on the peer-review process are an important consideration for science since the integrity of the system depends on the appropriate evaluation of merit. In 2006, we conducted an online survey of 1334 ecologists and evolutionary biologists pertaining to the review process. Respondents were from Europe, North America and other regions of the world, with the majority from English first language countries. Women comprised a third of all respondents, consistent with their representation in the scientific academic community. Among respondents we found no correlation between the time typically taken over a review and the reported average rejection rate. On average, Europeans took longer over reviewing a manuscript than North Americans, and females took longer than males, but reviewed fewer manuscripts. Males recommended rejection of manuscripts more frequently than females, regardless of region. Hence, editors and potential authors should consider alternative sets of criteria, to what exists now, when selecting a panel of referees to potentially balance different tendencies by gender or region.