Understanding the peer review endeavor in scientific publishing

Peer review plays an essential role in the scholarly publishing life cycle. Using the verified peer review records of reviewers who use the Publons, we employed review length as a potential indicator of the effort researchers spend on peer review. We then examined the associations between various factors and review length. Special focus was placed on estimating the relationships between non-academic (economic and sociological aspects) factors and review length. Our results show that gender, country-level cultural backgrounds, and country-level economic backgrounds were significantly associated with review length. In addition, there are significant associations of disciplines (humanities & social sciences or hard sciences), English proficiency, publications, and verified reviews with review length.