Figure 3.

Peer review and editorial process of the ESC Congress 2006. All abstracts submitted were peer-reviewed in a blinded fashion by three to eight expert reviewers, and graded on a scale from 1 to 10. (A) Reviewer ratings and editorial decisions. Accepted studies had received significantly higher ratings than rejected studies; studies for oral presentation had been ranked significantly higher than those for poster presentations. The cut-off for acceptance at 6.5 was calculated using the Yuden's index (sensitivity 0.97, specificity 0.92). (B) Receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve analyses after the scientometric follow-up of a representative subsample of 10% of all abstracts submitted (n= 1002) revealed a predictive value of average reviewer ratings of 69.4%. (C) Spearman's correlation of average reviewer ratings with acceptance at the Congress, subsequent full-text-publication and citation rates uncovered a significant positive correlation in all three cases. (D) Comparison of the numbers of 2-year citations of both accepted and rejected, subsequently published studies. Analyses revealed that rejected and subsequently published studies were cited significantly less frequently compared with accepted and subsequently published studies; citation frequencies between different presentation formats did not differ. AUC, area under the curve, significance level (P< 0.017) adjusted for multiple comparisons using Bonferroni's correction, interquartile ranges, whiskers indicate minima and maxima.