Peer review sits at the heart of academic publishing. It is widely understood as a professional responsibility, an essential mechanism for maintaining quality and credibility in research.
Most academics accept this as part of their role. Reviewing is seen as a contribution to the scholarly community, alongside publishing, teaching and supervision.
Yet there is another way to look at it.
When viewed through a governance lens, peer review is not only an individual activity. It is a significant institutional commitment of time and expertise, one that is rarely measured, costed or managed strategically.
This raises an important question.
Can universities afford to support a system that depends so heavily on their resources, but sits largely outside of their control?
The invisible institutional cost
Peer review is often described as unpaid labour. At the level of the individual academic, that is true.
At the level of the institution, however, the picture looks different.
Academic staff are salaried. Their time is a funded resource. When that time is spent reviewing papers, it represents an allocation of institutional capacity.
That is, the scholar could be doing something else with their time that helps the institution, rather than contributing to the bottom line of a publisher.
In most universities, peer review is only partially visible. It may appear in promotion criteria or annual reviews, but it is rarely tracked in a systematic way.
In one of my previous institutions, when we were considering promotions, we would only consider things that we “asked” them to do. Things like peer review, were not really considered as these were i) outside of the universities control; ii) the scholar can decide to do it (or not) and iii) if it was a measure we tracked the scholar could easily maximise it by doing more.
Therefore, it is not consistently built into workload models and is seldom costed.
As a result, a substantial amount of institutional effort operates below the level of formal recognition.
What appears to be voluntary academic service is, in practice, a distributed institutional investment.
A system under strain
The demands placed on the peer review system are increasing.
Submission volumes continue to rise across many fields. Journals require more reviewers. Editors report growing difficulty in securing timely reviews. Academics receive frequent requests and often decline due to competing priorities.
The consequence is a tightening of capacity.
Review cycles lengthen. Decisions take longer. The time between submission and publication increases.
This is often framed as a challenge for journals. In reality, it has direct implications for universities.
If peer review slows down, the process of converting research activity into recognised outputs also slows down.
What appears to be a publishing issue becomes a bottleneck for institutions.
The strategic tension
This creates a tension that is rarely articulated.
Universities place significant emphasis on research outputs. Publications underpin rankings, funding allocations, reputation and career progression. In many areas of scholarly endeavour, they are a central performance metric.
Those outputs depend on a peer review system that universities do not control.
Institutions rely on it to validate their research. They also supply much of the labour that sustains it.
Yet the relationship between the two is rarely managed as part of institutional strategy.
In effect, universities depend on a system they do not manage but materially support.
From a governance perspective, that raises questions about alignment, sustainability and control.
A question for leadership
None of this suggests that peer review is unnecessary. On the contrary, its role in maintaining academic standards remains fundamental.
The question is not about whether peer review should exist.
It is about how it is recognised and managed.
If peer review is essential, but increasingly constrained, how should universities respond?
• Should peer review be explicitly recognised and incorporated into workload models?
• Should institutions set expectations or boundaries around reviewing activity?
• Should reviewing be aligned more closely with institutional priorities?
• Does the sector need to rethink how the system operates and is sustained?
• Should publishers and universities work more closely together such that the university is compensated for peer review, perhaps through article processing charges credits?
These are not purely academic questions. They are questions of governance, resource allocation and institutional strategy.
Closing reflection
Peer review has long been treated as a professional norm, something that sits quietly alongside the visible outputs of research.
But as pressures on the system increase, that quiet assumption becomes harder to sustain.
Universities are not only consumers of scholarly publishing. They are also the primary suppliers of its most critical resource.
The question is whether that resource is being recognised and managed in a way that reflects its true importance.
About the author
Graham Kendall is an experienced higher education leader and researcher, with senior roles including Vice-Chancellor, Provost and Pro-Vice-Chancellor. He is currently the Acting Vice-Chancellor of GlobalNxt University.
He largely focuses on governance, research strategy and the systems that shape academic behaviour, including metrics, incentives and publishing practices.
If your institution is also interested in this area, he welcomes the opportunity for discussion.