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Peer review in the scientific publication is widely used as a method to identify valuable knowledge. Editors have the task of selecting appropriate reviewers. We assessed the reasons given by potential reviewers for declining a request to review, and the factors associated with acceptance, taking into account the difference in the sex of the reviewer. This is a descriptive study of the review requests from a public health journal (Gaceta Sanitaria) with an enforced gender policy. The dependent variables were requests, response to requests, reasons potential reviewers gave for declining requests and time to review. We carried out a descriptive analysis of these indicators and applied logistic regression to analyze factors (professional and research/review experience) associated with having done at least one review in 2014-2015. Results were stratified by sex. Journal editors sent 1,775 requests to 773 potential reviewers; 52.3% of whom reviewed at least one manuscript. Of the 396 declined requests (22.3%), the most common reasons were lack of time and of experience (88.1%). No differences were observed by sex. In the multivariate analysis, having reviewed for the journal in previous years showed the strongest association with acceptance. Specific analyses of data on requests reviewers may be useful for improving the acceptance rates to review. This study did not show gender differences in several indicators of the reviewing process.

Purpose: The purpose of the study was to analyze the determinants of citations such as publication year, article type, article topic, article selected for a press release, number of articles previously published by the corresponding author, and publication language in a Spanish journal of public health., Methods: Observational study including all articles published in Gaceta Sanitaria during 2007-2011. We retrieved the number of citations from the ISI Web of Knowledge database in June 2013 and also information on other variables such as number of articles published by the corresponding author in the previous 5 years (searched through PubMed), selection for a press release, publication language, article type and topic, and others., Results: We included 542 articles. Of these, 62.5% were cited in the period considered. We observed an increased odds ratio of citations for articles selected for a press release and also with the number of articles published previously by the corresponding author. Articles published in English do not seem to increase their citations., Conclusions: Certain externalities such as number of articles published by the corresponding author and being selected for a press release seem to influence the number of citations in national journals., (Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)