This is a randomized controlled trial involving 24 community members who will receive training and mentoring in reviewing manuscripts. A total of 568 manuscripts submitted to 2 medical journals will be randomly assigned to an intervention or control group. Intervention manuscripts will be reviewed by both a community member and by scientific reviewers while control manuscripts will be reviewed only by scientific reviewers. Community reviewers will follow each journal’s instructions regarding electronic access to manuscripts, use of drop-down menus and free-text boxes to address specific aspects of the review, and completion within the time frame specified by the journal. Journal editorial teams will use all reviews to help them make decisions about acceptance, revision, or rejection of manuscripts. Quantitative and qualitative analyses will i) compare the content of community and scientific reviews, ii) determine the usefulness of community reviews to journal editors, and iii) explore how community reviewer comments are integrated into published articles.
Primary Aim A. To compare community member reviews with those of scientific reviewers.
Hypothesis: Compared to scientific reviewers, community reviewers will be more likely to comment on relevance to patients and communities, subject diversity, social context, and implementation barriers.
Primary Aim B. To determine the usefulness of community member reviews to editors.
Hypothesis: Editors will report utilizing community reviewer comments in manuscript decisions.
Secondary Aim C. To explore how community reviews are integrated into published articles.
Hypothesis: Community perspectives that were not present in manuscripts at the time of original submission will subsequently be discernible in published articles.
Related Paper: Community Members’ Experiences Training as Medical Journal Reviewers