Characteristics of Peer Review Reports: Editor-Suggested Versus Author-Suggested Reviewers

Peer review is widely recognized as a mechanism for quality control of academic content. This research article aims at comparing the review reports and decisions of reviewers who are members of the editorial board of the European Scientific Journal (ESJ) with those reviewers suggested by the authors and who are not affiliated with the journal. 457 review reports on 378 papers submitted to the ESJ in the period of October-December 2017 were analysed. Statistical methods including OLS and Wilcoxon rank-sum test were applied based on the score approach toward the reviewers' assessments of the papers and their characteristics related to the country, gender, and time of revisions. Results show the difference between the decisions these two groups of reviewers made. Even though editor-suggested and author-suggested reviewers need equal time to review a paper, the former are less favourable towards the authors of the papers. It is also concluded that factors such as time and country of the reviewers influence their decisions. In this regard, the editors should avoid relying their decisions solely on review reports received from reviewers suggested by the authors. However, further research with larger sample sizes should be conducted.