Reviewer interest in a manuscript may predict its future citation potential

Abstract

Previous studies have investigated the relationship between editorial delay and eventual citations, and generally have found that longer editorial delays are related to fewer future citations. There are many reasons that editorial delay can occur, one such reason is the inability to find willing and able peer reviewers. While a previous study found that the most common reason for reviewers to decline is due to time constraints, it is unclear how reviewer interest and the potential to be cited are related. Here, we examined 4 years (2010–2013) of manuscripts submitted to the Bulletin of Marine Science and paired accepted articles with subsequent citation data. Our aim was to investigate: (1) the relationship between number of reviewer invitations and probability of acceptance, and (2) the limitation that number of reviewer invitations may have on citation rates (citations per year). Our findings suggest that the number of reviewer invitations sent is not related to the probability of manuscript acceptance. However, we found that the number of reviewer invitations sent may signal a limit on the number of citations per year. After seven reviewer invitations, there was a substantial drop in the potential of higher citation rates. We hypothesize that reviewer interest in a manuscript may serve as a predictor of the potential citations an article will receive, and could be one of many mechanisms behind the editorial delay–eventual citation relationship. Additional research is needed to see if these patterns hold true over longer time periods and for other journal titles and fields.