Peer Review in academic research is broken

A certain Dr Lin Atkin tweeted that she submitted a manuscript and gotten back a reply two months later that 12+ people declined to review.

link to tweet

This is not uncommon in today's situation.

Let's see what others are saying as response to that tweet. Nice note taking!

• peer review should be considered a subset of scholarship

• but that would be hard to track

• compensating reviewer may be the solution

• yes, especially since open access allows private companies to profit from these publication

• Suggestion to offer the preprint to independent review

• Seems to have caused editors to invite more than necessary reviewers and have some uninvited later because requirements are meet

• One gave their mentee a range, like 12-14 reviews to complete a year

• Having to deal with different and complicated review submission systems doesn't help too

• Some may stop accepting request from automatic emails, so personal emails may help

• If the first choice reviewers do not review, the review ends up with largely unsuitable lower rung reviewers

• On the receiving end, many are asked to review things that is far from one's expertise

• Academics are burnt out

• Maybe we should always reply, is there a compensation?

• People will lose interest in reviewing if their papers don't get review, vicious cycle

• Not getting enough reviewers could be a standard reply soon

• It is common to sometimes get only 1 review back

• Someone has a new platform that could help, seems interesting

Interesting conversation there.

It baffles me that science cannot solve this problem through a thorough research.

A blockchain-based solution could help. Save that for another day.