Table 2. Experiences with co-review and ghostwriting.
Responses to the question: “When you were not the invited reviewer, what was the extent of your involvement in the peer review process?” Survey participants were able to choose any and all applicable responses from a provided set of possible responses that can be broken down into three interpretation groups. Because respondents were able to select more than one answer, these data include all of the different co-reviewing experiences for each participant.
| Possible survey responses | Respondents that selected this as an answer (%) | Interpretation of response | Respondents that selected at least one of the answers in this group (n, %) |
|---|---|---|---|
| “I read the manuscript, shared short comments with my PI, and was no longer involved” | 40 | No significant contribution | 149 respondents (40%) selected this response |
| “I read the manuscript, wrote a full report for my PI, and was no longer involved” | 47 | Significant contribution, without known credit | 258 respondents (70% of those with co-reviewing experience) selected at least one of the responses in this category |
| “I read the manuscript, wrote the report, my PI edited the report and my PI submitted report with only their name provided to the editorial staff” | 44 | ||
| “I read the manuscript, wrote the report, my PI edited the report and we submitted the report together with both of our names provided to the editorial staff” | 20 | Significant contribution, with known credit | 80 respondents (22% of those with co-reviewing experience) selected at least one of the responses in this category |
| “I read the manuscript, wrote the report, and submitted it independently without my PI’s name provided to the editorial staff” | 3 |
Note: (Mis)representation of authorship on any scholarly work can be a subjective grey area. We sought to specifically avoid this in our survey questions by using the answers to the question “When you were not the invited reviewer, what was the extent of your involvement in the peer review process?” to disambiguate the grey areas of authorship. We consider any experience that began with “I read the manuscript, wrote a full report for my PI, and...” to be an unequivocally significant contribution deserving of authorship on the peer review report.