I have edited journals for many years, both as an Associate Editor and as an Editor-in-Chief. Finding reviewers has never been easy, but until relatively recently I could usually invite between five and ten people and expect to secure the two or three reviews I needed.
For one recent manuscript, I invited 29 potential reviewers. Twenty-eight declined … and this is not an outlier. Securing the required number of reviews is becoming increasingly more difficult, at least in my experience.
I should say that there was nothing unusual about how I identified potential reviewers. I used the same approach that I have followed for years. I examined the references, searched bibliographic databases for recent and relevant work and considered the expertise required. I did not simply go with the suggestions provided by the editorial platform.
I shared this experience in a LinkedIn post and asked whether it was just me. The post reached far beyond my usual network. At the time of writing it had received over 150,000 impressions, almost 400 reactions and nearly 200 comments. I know that this might not be huge compared to some other accounts, but these figures make it one of my most popular posts.
The answer to my question “is it just me?” was emphatic. It is not.
A widespread problem
Editors from different disciplines reported similar experiences. One had issued more than 20 invitations to secure two reviewers. Another described a manuscript for which more than 40 invitations had been unsuccessful. Several noted that potential reviewers increasingly do not respond at all, leaving editors waiting before eventually having to approach someone else.
The comments also showed the other side of the problem. Some researchers reported receiving review invitations every day. One mid-career academic said that between five and ten requests a year had once been normal, but they had recently received twelve in a single month.
These experiences suggest that the problem cannot be explained simply by careless reviewer selection or a small number of reluctant academics. Something has changed in the relationship between the volume of manuscripts requiring review and the expert time available to review them.
More papers, but not more reviewer time
The number of journals, published articles and manuscript submissions has grown substantially. Peer review is also required for conferences, grant applications, academic appointments, institutional evaluations and many other activities.
Every additional submission creates a demand for two or three reviews, sometimes more if reviewers disagree or withdraw. The same active researchers may therefore be approached repeatedly by numerous journals and editors.
But the number of hours available for reviewing has not grown at the same rate.
Academics are balancing teaching, research, administration, supervision, grant applications, institutional service and growing expectations around public engagement. A review that takes several hours must compete with activities that are more visible to the university and more likely to influence promotion or performance assessment.
Peer review is commonly described as essential to scholarship. Yet the systems used to evaluate academics frequently treat it as optional.
Reviewing is work, but do we recognise it as work?
One of the most highly supported comments proposed that reviewing should be included in academic workloads and count towards promotion. There is an obvious logic to this. If universities expect their researchers’ papers to be reviewed, they should recognise the time their academics spend reviewing the work of others.
However, the same commenter identified the difficulty with this solution. If universities allocate paid academic time to reviewing manuscripts for commercial journals, are they effectively subsidising the publishing industry?
Universities already fund much of the research. They pay the salaries of the researchers who write the papers and, directly or indirectly, may pay subscription charges or article processing charges. If they also pay for the time spent reviewing those papers, the institution assumes yet another part of the cost while the financial benefits may accrue elsewhere.
Recognition within workloads would help individual academics, but it would not resolve the underlying question of who should bear the cost of peer review.
Has unpaid academic service reached its limit?
The strongest feeling in the discussion concerned the expectation that academics should provide highly skilled work without payment.
One contributor had published 178 papers and completed approximately 800 reviews. His view was that he had more than fulfilled his obligation to the academic community and that it was time for publishers to pay for good reviews.
Others were more direct. They asked why academics should continue providing unpaid labour to publishers that may be highly profitable, particularly when the same publishers charge substantial subscription fees or article processing charges. Some said they now automatically decline requests from large commercial publishers while remaining willing to help independent, scholarly or not-for-profit journals.
This distinction matters. Many academics still accept that peer review involves reciprocity. If we expect others to review our work, it seems reasonable that we should contribute to reviewing theirs. The resentment appears to arise when this reciprocal academic activity is incorporated into a commercial system that provides reviewers with little recognition or tangible benefit.
Payment is one possible response, but it also creates questions. Who would pay? Would the cost be passed to authors through higher publication charges? Could smaller society journals afford it? Might payment encourage people to accept reviews for which they lack the necessary expertise?
There is also a risk that a standard fee could turn an intellectual responsibility into a rapid transaction. Paying reviewers might increase acceptance rates without necessarily improving review quality. Payment could also influence editorial decisions in less obvious ways. A journal might be reluctant to seek an additional opinion when the evidence is inconclusive, or it may limit the number of simultaneous invitations because every acceptance creates a financial commitment.
We should recognise that the present arrangement has costs. Delayed reviews slow publication, repeated invitations consume editors’ time, and overburdened reviewers may produce rushed reports. Calling the current model free does not mean that it is without cost.
Have journals made reviewing unnecessarily difficult?
Money and workload were not the only concerns. One experienced reviewer described how the process had become less personal.
An invitation once felt like a request from an editor who knew why a particular reviewer’s expertise was relevant. Today, it may arrive as an automated message asking the recipient to create an account, remember another password, enter a platform and supply lots of details that seem irrelevant to the process of carrying out a review. If something goes wrong, there may be no obvious person to contact.
Other frustrations included invitations for papers outside the recipient’s expertise, inflexible deadlines, lengthy reviewer questionnaires and little meaningful acknowledgement after the report had been submitted.
Several commenters also questioned whether some manuscripts had received adequate editorial screening before being sent for external review. Asking reviewers to assess unsuitable, underdeveloped or clearly out-of-scope manuscripts wastes a scarce resource. It also reduces the likelihood that they will accept the next invitation.
Publishers and editors cannot solve the entire capacity problem, but they can reduce unnecessary friction. Better targeting, stronger desk screening, realistic deadlines and more personal communication would all make an invitation easier to accept.
Is AI making the problem worse?
AI appeared repeatedly in the discussion.
Some commenters suspected that AI-assisted writing is contributing to increased manuscript submissions. That is plausible, although it would require evidence before we could conclude that AI is a major cause of the present reviewer shortage.
A second concern was more immediate. Editors reported receiving reviews returned with remarkable speed that appeared to have been generated by AI without serious engagement with the manuscript. An editor may therefore approach 20 or 30 people, finally secure a reviewer and then receive a report that cannot be trusted.
AI might eventually improve reviewer matching, help editors identify unsuitable submissions and support some administrative aspects of review. But if it increases the number of submissions while making the authenticity of reviews harder to assess, it may deepen the current problem before (and if) it solves it.
What might improve the system?
The comments offered several possible ways in which the peer review system could be improved:
- Recognise high-quality reviewing in academic workloads and promotion.
- Pay reviewers or provide meaningful publication credits and fee waivers.
- Require authors who benefit from peer review to contribute reviews in return.
- Apply stronger editorial screening before seeking external reviewers.
- Improve the matching of manuscripts to genuine subject expertise.
- Simplify editorial platforms and reduce unnecessary data input.
- Make invitations more personal and provide flexible deadlines.
- Give early-career researchers supported opportunities to review.
None of these measures provides a complete solution. Requiring authors to review may widen the pool, but not every author has the necessary experience. Involving early-career researchers can support their development, but it must not become another way of allocating invisible work to those with the least institutional power.
Payment may increase willingness, but smaller journals may struggle to afford it. Workload recognition could help, but universities may reasonably ask why they should carry more of the cost of commercial publishing.
The most credible response is likely to involve several changes rather than depend on a single universal solution.
Is the goodwill model sustainable?
My 29 invitations eventually produced a reviewer, but that does not mean the system worked. For one thing, I still had to secure at least one more reviewer.
Peer review has survived because academics have generally accepted a shared obligation to evaluate one another’s work. That obligation remains important, but goodwill is not an unlimited resource. It becomes harder to sustain when submissions multiply, workloads grow, recognition remains limited and the financial structure surrounding publishing appears increasingly difficult to justify.
If peer review is essential to scholarly publishing, why do our institutions and publishing systems continue to treat it as if it costs nothing?
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About the author
Professor Graham Kendall is Vice-Chancellor of GlobalNxt University and an Emeritus Professor at the University of Nottingham. He has held senior university leadership roles in the UK and Malaysia and has published extensively in artificial intelligence, operational research, research evaluation and scholarly publishing. He writes about higher education leadership, research practice and publishing integrity.