Time to rethink academic publishing: the peer reviewer crisis

Carolina Tropini; B Brett Finlay; Mark Nichter; Melissa K Melby; Jessica L Metcalf; Maria Gloria Dominguez-Bello; Liping Zhao; Margaret J McFall-Ngai; Naama Geva-Zatorsky; Katherine R Amato; Eduardo A Undurraga; Hendrik N Poinar; Jack A Gilbert

doi:10.1128/mbio.01091-23

Time to rethink academic publishing: the peer reviewer crisis

mBio. 2023 Dec 19;14(6):e0109123. doi: 10.1128/mbio.01091-23. Epub 2023 Nov 17.

Authors

Carolina Tropini^{1

2

3}, B Brett Finlay^{1

2

4}, Mark Nichter^{1

5}, Melissa K Melby^{1

6}, Jessica L Metcalf⁷, Maria Gloria Dominguez-Bello^{1

8

9}, Liping Zhao^{1

8}, Margaret J McFall-Ngai¹⁰, Naama Geva-Zatorsky¹¹, Katherine R Amato^{1

12}, Eduardo A Undurraga^{1

13

14}, Hendrik N Poinar^{1

15}, Jack A Gilbert¹⁶

Affiliations

¹ Humans and the Microbiome Program, Canadian Institute for Advanced Research, Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
² Department of Microbiology and Immunology, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.
³ School of Biomedical Engineering, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.
⁴ Department of Biochemistry and Microbiology and the Michael Smith Laboratories, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.
⁵ School of Anthropology, University of Arizona, Tucson, Arizona, USA.
⁶ Department of Anthropology, University of Delaware, Newark, Delaware, USA.
⁷ Department of Animal Sciences, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, Colorado, USA.
⁸ Department of Biochemistry and Microbiology, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, New Jersey, USA.
⁹ Department of Anthropolog, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, New Jersey, USA.
¹⁰ Carnegie Institution for Science, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, California, USA.
¹¹ Department of Cell Biology and Cancer Science, Rappaport Faculty of Medicine, Technion-Israel Institute of Technology, Rappaport Technion Integrated Cancer Center (RTICC), Haifa, Israel.
¹² Department of Anthropology, Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois, USA.
¹³ Escuela de Gobierno, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, Santiago, Región Metropolitana, Chile.
¹⁴ Research Center for Integrated Disaster Risk Management (CIGIDEN), Santiago, Región Metropolitana, Chile.
¹⁵ Departments of Anthropology and Biochemistry, McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada.
¹⁶ Department of Pediatrics, Scripps Institution of Oceanography, University of California San Diego, La Jolla, California, USA.

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.

Publication types

Editorial

MeSH terms

Humans
Microbiology
Peer Review
Peer Review, Research* / standards
Periodicals as Topic
Publishing* / standards