Is a journal's ranking related to the reviewer's academic impact? (An empirical study based on Publons)

This study explores the relationship between a journal's ranking and the reviewer's academic impact through extracting bibliometric information about reviewers for the top 1,000 Publons medical partner journals between February 2019 and 2020. Pairwise comparisons illustrate that reviewers of higher impact factor/average journal impact factor (IF/JIF) percentile ranked journals had better citation metrics than those of lower‐ranked journals. Multilevel ordinal logistic regression analysis reveals a lower level of average citations per item and total citations, as well as h‐index scores, are associated with researchers who review for lower IF ranked journals; a lower level of average citations per item and verified reviews are associated with reviewing for lower JIF percentile ranked journals. Higher average citations per item and verified reviews are positively associated with reviewing for SCI journals compared to journals without an IF/JIF percentile. The results also show that there is no statistical difference in the academic impact of researchers who review for journals that have the lowest Impact factors and those that do not have an Impact Factor. These findings, although restricted to medical journals, may provide insights for editors when selecting reviewers.