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Current problems with peer review and possible solutions

Posted on October 6, 2026 by the Canadian Paediatric Society | Permalink

Topic(s): Academic publishing, Paediatrics and Child Health

By Pallavi Mukherjee

Peer review plays a dual role. One is to help journals editors publish high-quality papers and the other is to provide authors with constructive feedback. Peer review is central to academic publishing as these papers, that disseminate information about health or medical research and discoveries, new technologies, and infrastructures, can have a profound impact on society. But peer review isn’t a perfect system. This blog explores some of the structural and logistic problems facing peer review today and offers possible solutions.

Massive surge in volume of journal content

There has been a significant surge in publication of research articles and disciplinary scope of academic journals. The publication output indexed in Scopus and Web of Science rose to nearly 50% from 1.9 million per year in 2016 to 2.8 million per year in 2022.1 This multi-scale publication of papers, also known as impact inflation1 has put immense pressure on peer review, and resulted in publication of low-quality papers and citation bias and inflation.1,2 The sheer volume of material also helps explain why it can take 17 years for research evidence to translate into clinical practice.3,4

The surge in content could be attributed to the culture of ‘publish or perish’. Universities, teaching hospitals, and research institutes link publications to research productivity. More publications mean better chance at tenure or promotion (especially for early career researchers), potential for securing more grants, which in turn affects a university reputation. The rise of generative AI and paper mills feeds this culture and can result in more low-quality and even fraudulent papers5, health misinformation, and wasted resources.

From 2013 to 2023, more than 39,000 papers were retracted, nearly 50% due to data issues, 16% due to plagiarism, and 8.3% because of problems with the peer review process. Capping the number of papers published will not only ensure the publication of high-quality papers but also reduce strain on editors, decrease reviewer workload, and give time for researchers and policymakers to catch up on existing literature. Initiatives such as slow science movement and San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment are advocating for a considerate and sustainable approach to research.

Most journals see value in publishing novel studies with positive data. But encouraging the publication of negative results can save time and money, eliminate publication bias of positive studies, improve research integrity and ethics, and acknowledge the hard work that goes behind failed experiments and studies.

Reviewer selection bias

Region-based bias

The lack of diversity among editorial board members and peer reviewers is a common topic of discussion in academic publishing. The Publons Global State of Peer Review6 found that emerging countries like China, India, and Taiwan had a higher reviewer completion rate compared to countries such as the UK, US, and Japan. However, the report 6 found an inverse relationship between reviewer agreement rates to reviewer workload for established and emerging regions. This indicates that lower reviewer agreement rates in emerging regions were not due to unwilling peer reviewers but because they were not being invited.6 Several other studies have supported the underrepresentation of researchers from low- and middle-income countries as peer reviewers and editorial board members.7-12 One reason is that most academic journals, editors-in-chief and editors are in high-income countries such as the US and UK,6,13-15 and generally prefer to invite reviewers from their own geographic region. 6,16-18 This causes an imbalance in reviewer workload, gives fewer opportunities to reviewers from emerging countries, and leaves a vast pool of untapped reviewers. It biases research that interests a specific population and hinders research from marginalized groups.6,19

Peer review is a give-and-take process. Reviewers give authors feedback and help editors make decisions. Reviewers also learn about what’s new in their field, refine their critical thinking skills, understand what kind of research journals are looking for, and gain networking opportunities. Given that reviewers dedicate more than 100 million hours yearly, with most of this labour falling on reviewers in established regions, it is unsurprising that editors wait longer to secure reviewers or notice lower quality feedback. Inviting reviewers from across the globe would help close the peer review supply-demand gap, alleviate reviewer fatigue, decrease implicit bias faced by both non-native English reviewers and authors, and broaden research perspectives to reduce blind spots.8

Gender-based bias

Studies have shown gender-based bias in academic publishing.6,20-27According to UNESCO, only 1 in 3 researchers are women, and they face discrimination at all stages of the academic publication process: authorship position; manuscript time spent in peer review; reviewer feedback and editorial decisions 28-32; peer reviewers invitiations;26,33-36 and editorial board membership.26,37-40

Despite a steady increase in women researchers globally since 2001 and a growth in their published papers that matches their male counterparts,22,23,41-43 this growth is not linear: women are still underrepresented in certain fields and countries.20,41,44 Encouraging more women throughout all stages of the research and academic publishing process will help15 mitigate reviewer selection bias, lead to more comprehensive feedback and fairer editorial decisions, and ultimately promote equal opportunities for all reviewers.

Lack of transparency in peer review

Peer review can have a significant influence on the fate of a manuscript of a researcher’s career trajectory, but the process lacks transparency. Depending on the journal, peer review can be blind (to varying degrees) or open. Although blind peer review is the standard industry practice and has reduced bias, studies have shown that double-blind review is not successful at hiding the author’s identity, improving review quality or detecting errors, and has resulted in unethical practices by reviewers.45-49 Open peer review increases transparency and reduces negative feedback50,51 but has its own disadvantages.46,52-54 Many journals are optimizing the process to make the peer review process more transparent.

In transparent peer review, a journal article is published along with a complete review history, including reviewer reports (without revealing identity), author responses and editorial decision letters. Preprints receive feedback from reviewers around the world, allowing authors to improve their work before submitting to a peer-reviewed journal. Preprints have the potential to decrease publication delays associated with editorial and reviewer workload and can result in the publication of high-quality work. Some researchers are skeptical about the reliability of preprints, especially since they are not peer reviewed and therefore, prone to errors. Preprints can spread misinformation. And because they are published online with DOIs, they cannot be fully removed even if the data is later refuted.

Lack of training and inconsistencies in peer review

In a study of a fictitious manuscript laden with errors, peer review failed to identify two-thirds of the major errors. In another study of 171 biomedical researchers, 84.1% indicated that they had no formal peer review training and 75.7% of participants agreed that they would like training. As training is not mandatory to review manuscripts, many reviewers gain only hands-on experience. Structured rubrics and standardized questionnaires can help, as well as encouraging reviewers use their knowledge to assess methodological soundness and scientific and ethical standards of academic publishing, as opposed to the ‘importance’ of the topic. Parker et al’s (2018) reviewer checklist addresses critical components of reviewing, and several free and paid short-term peer review training courses are offered by Elsevier, Nature , BMJ, ACS, Wiley and Clarivate. A Clarivate blog outlines how to find common research flaws in a manuscript.

However, implementing reviewer training can be tricky. Reviewer guidelines can change from journal to journal and mandatory reviewer training could reduce an already shallow reviewer pool, thereby increasing publication time. To avoid this, Proctor et al. 2023 proposed integrating peer review education and training as a mandatory coursework at the graduate and undergraduate level.

Peer review is time-consuming

Editors report that the most challenging part of the publishing process is securing reviewers.6 Based on the total number of publications, it was estimated that 13.7 million reviews are done each year, yet there is no survey to establish how much work really goes behind the peer review process.6 The Publons 20186 and Taylor & Francis 2015 reports found that it takes a little over two weeks to review a manuscript after the reviewer has agreed to review. This timeline doesn’t include the time it takes for editors to secure one review (in 2013, journals editors sent reviewer invitation emails to an average of 1.9 reviewers to secure one reviewer; this has increased to an average of 2.4 in 20176), for reviewers to accept the invitation, or for editors to look for new reviewers if the invited reviewers reject the invitation.

The financial value for the time spent on peer review is estimated at 1.5 billion USD for reviewers in the US, 600 million USD for China, and 400 million USD for those based in the UK. Offering payment has been a complex and ongoing debate within the academic publishing community, one that intensified during the COVID-19 pandemic as publications spiked. Offering to pay peer reviewers, even a modest amount, can improve outcome.55 It can reduce time to secure reviewers, decrease turnaround time from submission to first decision, increase reviewer accountability and quality of review, grow a reviewer pool, and promote publishing parity between publishers and reviewers.55-59 Still, many researchers view peer reviewing as giving back to the community and warn that offering to pay reviewers could lead to increased article processing charges and subscription fees. They also point to a lack of agreed-upon criteria or method for compensation, distortion in the selection of reviewers, and the potential for agencies/reviewers to fabricate reviews.60-61

Conclusion

Securing reviewers is challenging, and journal editors work hard to find suitable reviewers. By making intentional changes, publishers and editors can improve the peer review process. Shifting the focus to publishing fewer high-quality papers, publishing negative results, diversifying the peer review pool, enhancing training, and experimenting with different peer review approaches can mitigate some of the problems.

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Last updated: Oct 6, 2026

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