Data-driven editorial management: an indicator model applied to peer review

Objective:  To characterize the peer review process of the journal Cadernos Ibero-Americanos de Direito Sanitário (CIADS) between 2015 and 2025 through the construction and application of an analytical indicator model derived from Open Journal Systems (OJS) metadata and integrated with Business Intelligence tools.

Method:  A documentary, descriptive, and quantitative study with a retrospective longitudinal design. Metadata from the Review Report module were extracted in CSV format, subjected to cleaning, standardization, and modeling procedures, and transformed into editorial indicators related to reviewer assignments, geographic participation, temporal distribution of completed reviews, recommendation categories, and editorial interventions. Analyses were operationalized through analytical measures and the visualization of results in Power BI dashboards.

Results:  A total of 1,119 reviewer assignments involving 235 reviewers were identified, resulting in 898 completed reviews. The review process was characterized by the recurrent concentration of invitations among a restricted group of reviewers, international participation with a complementary role to the national base, and the occurrence of three distinct temporal phases over the historical series. The predominant recommendations were “Accept” (40.91%) and “Mandatory revisions” (37.9%). Editorial follow-up included 344 reminders and 44 cancellations.

Conclusions:  The integration of OJS metadata with Business Intelligence tools enabled the transformation of operational records into descriptive analytical evidence, making visible structural patterns, asymmetries, and dynamics of the peer review process. The proposed indicator model proved to be low-cost and applicable to scientific journals with different profiles, within the limits of the available data and the adopted methodological scope.

KEYWORDS:
Peer review; Editorial management; Editorial indicators; Business Intelligence; Open Journal Systems.