NDLI: Menage a Quoi? Optimal Number of Peer Reviewers

Content Provider	PubMed Central
Author	Snell, Richard R.
Editor	Gray, Clive M.
Copyright Year	2015
Abstract	Peer review represents the primary mechanism used by funding agencies to allocate financial support and by journals to select manuscripts for publication, yet recent Cochrane reviews determined literature on peer review best practice is sparse. Key to improving the process are reduction of inherent vulnerability to high degree of randomness and, from an economic perspective, limiting both the substantial indirect costs related to reviewer time invested and direct administrative costs to funding agencies, publishers and research institutions. Use of additional reviewers per application may increase reliability and decision consistency, but adds to overall cost and burden. The optimal number of reviewers per application, while not known, is thought to vary with accuracy of judges or evaluation methods. Here I use bootstrapping of replicated peer review data from a Post-doctoral Fellowships competition to show that five reviewers per application represents a practical optimum which avoids large random effects evident when fewer reviewers are used, a point where additional reviewers at increasing cost provides only diminishing incremental gains in chance-corrected consistency of decision outcomes. Random effects were most evident in the relative mid-range of competitiveness. Results support aggressive high- and low-end stratification or triaging of applications for subsequent stages of review, with the proportion and set of mid-range submissions to be retained for further consideration being dependent on overall success rate.
Related Links	http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0120838
Starting Page	120838
File Format	PDF
ISSN	19326203
e-ISSN	19326203
Journal	PLoS ONE
Issue Number	4
Volume Number	10
Language	English
Publisher	Public Library of Science
Publisher Date	2015-04-01
Access Restriction	Open
Rights Holder	Public Library of Science
Subject Keyword	Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology(all) Agricultural and Biological Sciences(all) Medicine(all) Research in Higher Education
Content Type	Text
Resource Type	Article
Subject	Multidisciplinary

Sl.	Authority	Responsibilities	Communication Details
1	Ministry of Education (GoI), Department of Higher Education	Sanctioning Authority	https://www.education.gov.in/ict-initiatives
2	Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur	Host Institute of the Project: The host institute of the project is responsible for providing infrastructure support and hosting the project	https://www.iitkgp.ac.in
3	National Digital Library of India Office, Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur	The administrative and infrastructural headquarters of the project	Dr. B. Sutradhar bsutra@ndl.gov.in
4	Project PI / Joint PI	Principal Investigator and Joint Principal Investigators of the project	Dr. B. Sutradhar bsutra@ndl.gov.in Prof. Saswat Chakrabarti will be added soon
5	Website/Portal (Helpdesk)	Queries regarding NDLI and its services	support@ndl.gov.in
6	Contents and Copyright Issues	Queries related to content curation and copyright issues	content@ndl.gov.in
7	National Digital Library of India Club (NDLI Club)	Queries related to NDLI Club formation, support, user awareness program, seminar/symposium, collaboration, social media, promotion, and outreach	clubsupport@ndl.gov.in
8	Digital Preservation Centre (DPC)	Assistance with digitizing and archiving copyright-free printed books	dpc@ndl.gov.in
9	IDR Setup or Support	Queries related to establishment and support of Institutional Digital Repository (IDR) and IDR workshops	idr@ndl.gov.in

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