Blind leading the blind: Is the current peer review process really that flawed? (519)

Abstract

<b>Objectives:</b> The peer-review process has an inherent bias, and a double-blinded review has recently been introduced into national obstetrics and gynecologic journals to mitigate this bias. Our primary aim was to determine if the number of articles published per institution in <i>Gynecologic Oncology</i> correlates with the articles' quality, using the index of citation (IOC) as a stand-in for article quality. The secondary outcome was to calculate the proportion of original articles from non-US institutions and their corresponding median IOC. <b>Methods:</b> PubMed was queried for all articles in the journal <i>Gynecologic Oncology</i> from 2005-2020. Two cohorts were analyzed. The first cohort consisted of original articles published from institutions within the United States (US). Articles not from the US or not deemed original research (editorials, reviews, case reports, etc.) were not included in this cohort. First, author affiliation bylines listed in PubMed were used to assign articles to their corresponding institution. Universities and colleges were used preferentially in instances where multiple affiliations were in a first author's byline. Affiliations had to be listed in an author's byline to assign the article to that institution. In instances where affiliation was unclear, all three reviewers had to agree which institution to assign an article or article was excluded. PubMed "Cited By" number was used as a proxy for the quality of the article published. To account for lead-time bias, an Index of Citation (IOC) was calculated by dividing the number of citations by the days from the publication date to the data cuff-off date, September 1, 2021. The median value summarized the IOC per institution. Correlation coefficients were estimated using Pearson's correlation after log-transformation. A second analysis of articles from all countries was performed, using median IOC as the primary descriptor statistic. Only countries with >2 original articles were included. <b>Results:</b> From 2005-2020, 2733 articles from 276 institutions within the US contributed original articles to the <i>Gynecologic Oncology</i> journal. The median number of publications per institution was two (range: 1,219). The median IOC was 0.0030 (0.0002, 0.2002). The median index of citation per institution was 0.0028 (0.0002, 0.0370). The Pearson's correlation coefficient between the number of publications per institution and median IOC was 0.14 (p=0.024), a weakly positive correlation. The Pearson's correlation coefficient between the number of publications per institution and that institution's max IOC was 0.68 (p<0.001), indicating a significantly positive, strong correlation. A second analysis of all original articles from the US and non-US institutions was performed. Five thousand two hundred fifteen original research articles were published from 41 countries. The median IOC for articles from non-US institutions was identical to the median IOC from US institutions (0.003 vs 0.003). Countries were then ranked by median IOC. The US ranked 15/41 and produced just over half (50.47%) of the published articles. <b>Conclusions:</b> Over the 15-year period of our study, a large number of institutions contributed articles to <i>Gynecologic Oncology.</i> The number of articles published per institution did not correlate with the median IOC, indicating the journal publishes articles cited at similar frequencies from various institutions within the US. Furthermore, articles from non-US institutions are nearly equally represented with equivalent IOC. Altogether, the journal's review system appears to be equitable.