We have become used to speaking about scholarly peer review with some scepticism. Critics note that it is subjective and therefore inconsistent, it can be slow, it tends to down-weight negative results, and it is increasingly susceptible to manipulation. Richard Smith, former editor of the BMJ has described it as only ‘the least worst [system] we have’ and likened the outcomes to spinning a roulette wheel. He also reports that an earlier editor half-jokingly proposed throwing all the papers they received down the stairs and publishing those that reached the bottom. It seemed that we were doomed to live with a system which we simultaneously despair of, and can’t imagine doing without. But in July 2023, we saw some interesting signs that there may be new life in peer review after all.
Covid-19 saw a surge in rapid, community-led peer review because of the urgent need to understand more about the virus. Unfortunately, a number of the resulting articles later had to be retracted and this damaged faith in community-driven rapid review.
September’s Peer Review Week is always a time for reflection on peer review and this year especially so, with a theme of Peer review and the future of publishing. October also saw a COPE Forum on peer review models, and COPE’s recent Publication Integrity Week featured a lively session on AI and peer review.
Systematic study of peer review has until recently been rare, but this is starting to change, with a growing number of scholars aligning themselves with an interdisciplinary field of Peer Review Studies. These scholars have started to quantify and test the impact of innovations like open review, reviewer training, and automation. Individual journals and publishers have also brought in new review models like portable or cascading review where reports are shared with other journals either via a central organisation or more informally.
