Peer Review in 2013: More Supports than Neglects

At the time of editing the first issue of 2014, Volume 29 Number 1 of the Journal of Korean Medical Science (JKMS), contributions by all authors and peer reviewers in 2013 should be appreciated. The JKMS received total 1,282 submissions by December 19 in 2013, and published 340 papers. About one quarter of the total submissions were rejected by internal preview, and the remaining manuscripts were peer reviewed. For the peer review, the JKMS invited 1731 peer reviewers from various specialties in medicine.

A total of 383 (22.1%) reviewers declined to review because of limitation of time or inadequate specialty. However, 175 (10.1%) of 1731 reviewers gave no comments after acceptance of the review. The 571 reviewers provided a total of 997 review comments; 111 provided two reviews, 37 provided 3, and 20 provided 4 or more. The editor scored the reviewers' response considering both efforts and contents from 1 to 5; score 1 for poor efforts and contents, 2 for poor efforts or contents, 3 for acceptable, 4 for commendable, 5 for exceptional, hard to improve. With mean scoring of 3.4, and the frequencies by the scoring are 4 (0.8%) for score 1, 126 (25.1%) for score 2, 296 (59.0%) for score 3, 73 (14.5%) for score 4, and 3 (0.6%) for score 5.

The JKMS appreciates timely professional voluntary contribution of all reviewers as listed below. Top reviewers in 2013 were 76, who received score 5 or 4 and multiple reviews. An asterisk on the name identifies them on the list.