Key points are not available for this paper at this time.
Anyone who frequents the JBJS Editorial pages knows how much we value, depend on, and esteem our peer reviewers. In 2023 alone, our >1,500-member pool of JBJS Consultant Reviewers, Guest Reviewers, and Board of Associate Editors provided >6,500 painstaking, in-depth content reviews and decision recommendations for papers submitted to our journals. We are truly grateful to these busy professionals who donate their time, hard work, and expertise, and try to do it with a 2-week turnaround despite their already crammed schedules. Along with our gratitude, we hope that we can continue to attract top-notch reviewers by offering a little more. With this in mind, we created our Elite Reviewers program, provide CME credit for peer review, and help our reviewers obtain public recognition for their work through a Web of Science Researcher Profile (formerly Publons). Our Elite Reviewers program includes reviewers who almost always accept invitations to review and respond to review requests within 48 hours, review ≥4 manuscripts per year and return those reviews within 1 week, and receive high grades for the quality of their reviews. In return for meeting these considerable challenges, JBJS waives submission fees for papers for which the Elite Reviewer is the senior author, provides free online access to all JBJS publications, sends a letter of commendation from the JBJS Editor-in-Chief to the Elite Reviewer's department head, and lists all Elite Reviewers on our masthead and website. We are proud to announce that 83 reviewers met the criteria for the JBJS Elite Reviewers program in 2023. In that year alone, Elite Reviewers have received a total of 29 submission fee waivers and 65 letters of commendation were sent to Reviewers' department heads. The most recent addition to the Elite Reviewers Program was the awarding of CME credit for peer reviews. An exciting new development is that we will now reward all of our reviewers who review for our flagship (print) journal with this benefit. At the end of each year, reviewers can claim 3 AMA PRA Category-1 credits for each manuscript review, with a maximum of 15 credits per year (for a total of 5 reviews). All of our reviewers across all of our products benefit from the relationship between JBJS and the Web of Science, which allows them to keep track of their peer review credentials and display them to the scholarly community. Since 2019, JBJS has asked everyone who submits a review whether they have established or wish to establish (for free) a Web of Science Researcher Profile. This profile is a way of maintaining all of one's scholarly achievements in 1 place, which can be used to "share a complete view of one's achievements to attract collaborators and funders"1 or when applying for positions or promotions. So far, JBJS has verified 14,000 records of peer reviews to be included in our reviewers' Web of Science Researcher Profiles. While the goal of the above initiatives is certainly to thank the dedicated individuals who perform the rigorous peer review for JBJS, we also hope that by "sweetening the pot" just a bit we are more likely to maintain and attract a large, robust pool of expert reviewers. On the flip side, we evaluate our reviewers annually using a number of performance factors so that those who are unable to meet our benchmarks are removed from the pool. Ultimately, all of these efforts are in the service of our authors, our readers, and their patients. We reward individuals who quickly accept invitations to review and who complete reviews of the highest quality in record time so that our authors can benefit from the best feedback and shortest time to publication possible. This encourages the "best and the brightest" to send us their cutting-edge research, which in turn is so vital for improving patient care. In closing, for those who like numbers, this Editorial has provided a few reviewer-related statistics. For those who crave more, please see Table I for our annual presentation of key JBJS metrics. TABLE I - JBJS 2023 Statistics JBJS manuscripts (no. published/received %) Scientific 160/1,097 (14.6%) Reviews, editorials, forums, other 186/324 (57.4%) Average time, all JBJS article types (d) Submission to acceptance 109 Submission to rejection 62 Acceptance to publication 48 Active peer reviewers (no.) 1,005 2022 impact factor 5.3 Where indexed MEDLINE, Scopus, CrossRef, Portico, Web of Science Distribution of print JBJS (no.) 15,001 Inside U.S. 14,049 Outside U.S. 952 Other JBJS journals (no. of published manuscripts) JBJS Reviews 106 JBJS Essential Surgical Techniques 33 JBJS Open Access 95 JBJS Case Connector 270 JBJS Journal of Orthopaedics for Physician Assistants 28 Social media (no.) Twitter followers 41,400 YouTube subscribers 17,800 LinkedIn followers 27,705 Instagram followers 28,400 OrthoBuzz blog followers 1,645 Podcast listeners (mean no./mo) OrthoJOE 3,497 Your Case Is on Hold 1,372 JBJS Education offerings (no.) Completed CME examinations 2,306 New individual Clinical Classroom subscribers 1,224 Mean Clinical Classroom users per month 312 JBJS.org web traffic* Total page views 2,001,510 Total sessions on JBJS.org 653,432 Total visitors 399,638 *Statistics regarding web traffic do not include Ovid (institutional usage).
M.F. Swiontkowski (Wed,) studied this question.