Student peer review decisions on submitted manuscripts are as stringent as faculty peer reviewers

The International Journal of Exercise Science is the only student-centered peer-reviewed journal in its field. Upon graduate student first author submissions, two student reviewers and one faculty reviewer are asked to review. On professionally submitted papers, two faculty peers are asked to assess the manuscript. The purpose of the present study was to determine whether graduate students returned similar decisions compared with faculty reviewers who evaluated the same manuscript. In addition, decisions of faculty peers reviewing graduate student- versus faculty-submitted manuscripts were compared. Mean comparisons between groups were evaluated using independent t-tests with significance at P ≤ 0.05. Graduate students (2.21 ± 0.69) and faculty peers (2.24 ± 0.66) returned similar decisions on student-submitted manuscripts (P = 0.84). Faculty decisions on manuscripts submitted by a professional primary author (1.86 ± 0.77) were not different compared with faculty peers reviewing student manuscripts (P = 0.06). Statistics revealed that graduate students are just as stringent in the peer review process as established reviewers. Additionally, faculty reviewers evaluated manuscripts equally regardless of submission type.