{"id":362657,"date":"2025-08-21T18:04:11","date_gmt":"2025-08-21T18:04:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/362657\/"},"modified":"2025-08-21T18:04:11","modified_gmt":"2025-08-21T18:04:11","slug":"peer-reviewers-more-likely-to-approve-articles-that-cite-their-own-work","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/362657\/","title":{"rendered":"Peer reviewers more likely to approve articles that cite their own work"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Reviewers are more likely to approve a manuscript if their own work is cited in subsequent versions than are reviewers who are not cited, according to an analysis of 18,400 articles from four open-access publications. The study, which is yet to be peer reviewed, was posted online as a preprint<\/a> earlier this month1<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The study was inspired by anecdotes from authors who cited articles only because reviewers asked them to, says study author Adrian Barnett, who researches peer review and meta-research at Queensland University of Technology in Brisbane, Australia. Sometimes, these requests are fine, he says. But if reviewers ask for too many citations or the reason to cite their work is not justified, the peer-review process can become transactional, says Barnett. Citations<\/a> increase a researcher\u2019s h-index, a metric reflecting the impact<\/a> of their publications.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

These are the most-cited research papers of all time<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

Making unnecessary or unjustified requests for citations, sometimes called coercive citation, is generally considered poor practice<\/a>. Balazs Aczel, a psychologist who studies metascience at E\u00f6tv\u00f6s Lor\u00e1nd University in Budapest, says that the latest work isn\u2019t the first to investigate reviewers asking for citations, but that the number of peer reviews<\/a> included and level of analysis is novel. A barrier to studying the practice is a lack of data sharing from publishers, he says.<\/p>\n

Approvals, rejections and reservations<\/p>\n

The preprint considered articles from four publishing platforms \u2014 F1000Research, Wellcome Open Research, Gates Open Research and Open Research Europe \u2014 that make all versions of their articles, as well as reviewer comments, publicly available. The publishers ask reviewers to approve articles, reject them or approve them with reservations. Reviewers are also asked to explain why when they ask authors to cite their own work. Of 37,000 reviews \u2014 at least two people reviewed each article \u2014 54% of reviewers approved articles with no changes and rejected 8%. Almost 5,000 reviewed articles cited a reviewer and roughly 2,300 reviews requested a citation from a reviewer.<\/p>\n

The analysis found that reviewers who were cited were more likely to approve the article after the first review than were reviewers who were not cited. <\/p>\n

But reviewers who suggested that their own research be cited were about half as likely to approve the article than reject it or express reservations. In more than 400 reviews in which the reviewer was not cited in version 1 of the article and requested a citation in their review, 92% of reviewers who were cited in version 2 recommended approval compared with 76% for reviewers who were not cited.<\/p>\n

When a reviewer rejects a paper, they and the authors know that the reviewer is probably going to evaluate any revised versions of the article, says Barnett, so authors might opt for the path of least resistance and include the citation to get their paper accepted.<\/p>\n

Reviewer comments<\/p>\n

Barnett also analysed 2,700 reviewer comments and identified the 100 most frequently used words. He found that reviewers who requested citation were more likely to use words such as \u2018need\u2019 or \u2018please\u2019 in their comments when they rejected an article, which he says suggests that coercive language was used.<\/p>\n

Jan Feld, a metascience researcher at the Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand, is not convinced that such language is a sign of coercion. \u201cThat seems like a bit of a stretch,\u201d he says. There are other explanations for reviewers rejecting an article than the author refusing to cite their work. He doesn\u2019t doubt that reviewers request citations that are not warranted, but they can recommend citations, including of their own work, to address issues they\u2019ve identified. But even after those recommendations, \u201cif the paper has not improved or I still have concerns, I cannot recommend publication\u201d, he adds.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Reviewers are more likely to approve a manuscript if their own work is cited in subsequent versions than…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":362658,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[3965,3966,127260,20188,70,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-362657","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-science","8":"tag-humanities-and-social-sciences","9":"tag-multidisciplinary","10":"tag-peer-review","11":"tag-publishing","12":"tag-science","13":"tag-uk","14":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115068080584046538","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/362657","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=362657"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/362657\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/362658"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=362657"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=362657"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=362657"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}