The manuscript reviewing process: Empirical research on review requests, review sequences, and decision rules in peer review

In peer review research, no study has been performed to date that has opened the “black box” of manuscript reviewing and dealt with the internal mechanisms of the process. Using as an example the peer review system of Angewandte Chemie International Edition (AC-IE), this study investigates which review requests are assigned by the editors to external reviewers, which sequences of review steps typically occur, and which rules are used by the editors to decide whether to accept or reject a manuscript for publication. For the investigation, information has been used on a total of 1899 manuscripts that were reviewed in the year 2000. The results show that in the majority of the manuscripts, the editors follow a so-called “clear-cut” rule: A manuscript is only accepted for publication if it has been positively assessed beforehand by two independent reviewers with regard to the importance of the results and the suitability of publication of the manuscript. For about a fifth of the manuscripts, the editors (a) consulted a top adviser for manuscript review, (b) asked a reviewer to review a manuscript revised by the author, or (c) asked a reviewer to read an appeal that an author filed against the rejection of his/her manuscript.