A typology of peer-reviewers: role, characteristics, and egoistic and altruistic perspectives

Hugo Horta and João M Santos

Research Evaluation, 2025, vol. 34

Abstract: There is a growing amount of research on peer reviewing, not only to obtain a better understanding of it as a key pillar of contemporary science but also because the peer review system is increasingly perceived to be in a state of crisis. Based on a sample of researchers in a variety of scientific fields and geographical locations, this study contributes to a better understanding of who engages in peer reviewing activities. It uses three measures of peer reviewing activity (i.e. number of peer reviews, length of the referee report, and review-to-publication ratio) to create a typology of peer review engagement, and identifies three disproportionally sized clusters of peer review engagement: selfish reviewers (accounting for almost two-thirds of the sample), diligent referees (∼30%), and prolific reviewers (

Keywords: peer review; profiling; clustering; Publons (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
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