Reviewer Conversion Rate Charts

The conversion rate charts are used to quantify how individuals invited to peer review respond.

Invited-to-agreed conversion rate and the invited-to-completed conversion rate are typically used to examine the health of your reviewer database. Invited-to-agreed is a measure of the percentage of the invitations to review that led to an agreement to review. Invited-to-completed is a measure of the percentage of the invitations to review that led to completed reviews. The invited-to-agreed conversion rate chart, of course, does not show whether the reviewers who agreed ultimately submitted their review.

Higher conversion rates indicate a healthy reviewer database containing individuals seemingly willing to provide peer reviews when asked more often than not. Furthermore, higher conversion rates may also indicate that your editors are effective at selecting reviewers who are more likely to agree to provide a peer review. Conversely, a lower conversion rate possibly indicates that many individuals currently in your reviewer database are less predisposed to agree to peer review. It should be noted that for an incomplete (current) year, especially early in the year, the conversion rate might be lower due to open invitations when compared to completed years where the data is now historic and the invitation and review process has been completed.

Just like the invited-to-agreed conversion rate chart, the invited-to-completed conversion rate chart gives an indication of the health of your reviewer database. It poses a slightly different question from the previous chart in that it asks, “For the number of invitations that you sent to reviewers, how many completed reviews were received?” This chart does not take into account the number of reviewers who agreed but never submitted a review. It shows the final outcome of your reviewer invitations. Incomplete (current) years will probably show a lower conversion rate since there are open reviewer invitations and more open reviews that have not yet been submitted. In reality, the invited-to-completed chart is best used historically rather than to measure the current year.

The general trend for the invited-to-agreed and invited-to-completed conversion rate charts should be similar, unless you have many reviewers who are agreeing to review, but never submitting. Either of these charts provides insight into how your reviewers are responding to your invitations. Ultimately, you could use both charts. Otherwise, it is down to your personal preference which of these conversion rate charts you use.

The agreed-to-completed conversion rate is a third measurement and slightly different from the previous two conversion rate charts since it indicates the reliability of your reviewers. This chart tells you how likely the reviewers are to submit their reviews after agreeing to review.

Obviously, conversion rates of 100% would be ideal, which would indicate that all reviewers who agree would eventually submit their review. What does it mean if your journal has lower agreed-to-completed conversion rates? It might mean that your reviewers are over committing themselves. For instance, your editors may be over relying on a small cohort of trusted reviewers that are always willing to agree to review but then find themselves to be over committed due to the number of times that they are asked. Equally, if you have a very short deadline for reviews to be completed, some reviewers simply may be taking too long with their review and miss their deadline. A confounder to this metric is if you have editors that are prone to terminate the peer review process early (i.e. editors who choose to make a decision early based on the first reviews received rather than waiting for all reviewers to complete their evaluations). Under this scenario, those reviewers who had still not finished their review at the moment the decision was made will show up as an incomplete review which will confound the agreed-to-submitted conversion rate.

It is commonly known that finding reviewers willing to complete the assessment of a manuscript is getting harder. These conversion rate charts are the best indicator of whether your journal is increasingly susceptible to reviewer apathy or outright antipathy to providing peer reviews. The charts won’t explain the reasons why the reviewers are declining at higher rates but they will certainly measure the trend. It is not uncommon now to witness journals routinely dropping below a 50% conversion rate. In other words, this means for every reviewer that is required, two or more invitations will have to be sent out to potential reviewers.

Invited-to-agreed conversion rate = # of reviewers who agreed to review/# of reviewer invitations sent

Invited-to-completed conversion rate = # of reviews completed/# of reviewer invitations sent

Agreed-to-completed conversion rate = # of reviews completed/# of reviewers who agreed to review