We all have the experience of just looking at the resume of a potential reviewer for our journal, finding it suitable, accepting the person for the review board, and finding that the system rarely finds that the reviewer matches the papers submitted. This is because the reviewer selected too few topics of interest and expertise that match the topics by which the journal matches papers with reviewers. And some potential reviewers volunteer for multiple journals, only a few of which match their topics of interest.

However, the system shows the potential reviewer their match to each journal. In this way, the system lets the reviewer know that they are not a good fit to join the review board.

Figure 17.  The system indicates a potential reviewer’s match to the journal

When you, as the Editor-in-Chief, receive a request from a potential reviewer to join your review board, the system shares this fitness information with you so you can decide whether or not to add the reviewer to your board.

Figure 18.  Deciding to accept or reject potential reviewer

We keep track of how many times a person requests to join the board of each journal where the EiC declines that request. This is useful information since a few people continue to re-apply to join or rejoin a review board. The reviewer’s details page displays the total declined requests by journal.

Figure 19. Reviewer’s page shows the history of declined requests

Your “accept or reject reviewer request page” also shows you if the colleague has previously published with us. If so, the volunteer is likely to understand the types and quality of reviews we expect.

Figure 20. The system shows the number of the reviewer’s previous publications in any of our journals.