Time to rethink academic publishing: the peer reviewer crisis

Abstract

There is concern that the time taken to publish academic papers in microbiological science has significantly increased in recent years. While the data do not specifically support this, evidence suggests that editors are having to invite more and more reviewers to identify those willing to perform peer review.

Keywords: artificial intelligence; early career researcher; peer review; peer review crisis; reviewer rewards.

Fig 1

The average number of days from receipt to first decision (this includes the time from completion of the final review until the editor sent the decision letter) that a submission spent in peer review prior to publication across nine ASM journals. Error bars indicate standard error.

Fig 2

The average number of days from receipt to first decision (this includes the time from completion of the final review until the editor sent the decision letter) that a submission spent in peer review prior to publication broken out across the nine ASM journals. Error bars indicate standard error.

Fig 3

(A) The number of reviewers N that are contacted per article to be reviewed is increasing. (B) Editors of all career stages, early (postdoctoral or assistant professor), mid (associate professor), and senior (full professor and emeritus) are having to ask more people to review papers. Data from nine ASM journals. Error bars represent standard error. In the legend, n represents the number of editors represented in these categories between the years 2016 and 2022.

Fig 4

The number of reviewers N that are contacted per article to be reviewed across the nine different ASM journals.