Effect of Acceptance or Rejection on the Author’s Evaluation of Peer Review of Medical Manuscripts

To determine whether authors of rejected manuscripts would evaluate the editorial review process less favorably than would authors of manuscripts accepted for publication, a questionnaire was sent to solicit evaluations of the quality of the reviews that had led to the rejection or acceptance of manuscripts submitted to the Journal of Pediatrics. Similar evaluations of the editor’s letter were also sought. Authors were more likely to respond to the questionnaire if their manuscripts had been accepted and were more likely to complete the questionnaire thoroughly. Authors of accepted manuscripts evaluated the editor’s communication more favorably than did the authors of manuscripts not accepted for publication, but the evaluations of the reviews were not significantly different. Most authors utilized the reviews to modify their manuscripts before submitting them to another journal.