How do I assess whether a journal peer reviewer should be invited?

When assigning peer reviews it is important to target people with suitable subject knowledge but also to ensure that reviewers are not being invited who are unlikely to accept the invitation or inviting the same reviewers over and over again. When assigning a reviewer the editorial system will provide some information to help the editor assess whether a reviewer should be invited or not.

When assigning a reviewer to the review task, the editor will be presented with a list of potential reviewers already in the journal system. This will include data on their user profile and historic review history, including:

1. Affiliation
2. Reviewer rating - if present, as rated by editors who have received reviews from this reviewer in the past
3. Review interests
4. Active reviews currently assigned
5. Reviews completed
6. Review requests declined
7. Review requests cancelled
8. Days since last review assigned
9. Average days to complete review

The information is split into a default ‘quick view’ where only the key data is displayed - as below:

Clicking on the arrow to the right of the row will expand this information to provide the full table - as below:

If a reviewer does not have suitable reviewing interests, already has active review assignments or their last review assignment was in the recent past then it may be appropriate to look for alternative reviewers.