There is a crisis in peer review.
It affects all disciplines. It affects all types of publishers. It adds delays to the publishing process, which was already frustratingly long.
I suspect it is also affecting the reviews themselves in various ways.
The Peer Review Crisis is a symptom of a wider crisis in HE
Although academic publishing is not without its problems, the peer review crisis is not just a symptom of those problems. It’s a symptom of a wider crisis in higher education.
Fewer secure, long-term positions. A large number of teaching only positions, many of them insecure and poorly paid.
More pressure on those in secure positions to publish more, and to secure external funding. More competition for secure positions puts more pressure on doctoral candidates, and those in precarious positions, to publish despite the lack of institutional support.
Increased enrollment has changed the nature of teaching and the time required for teaching related activities like preparation, marking, and interacting with students outside of class time. Fewer secure, long term positions means that administrative and governance work is distributed amongst fewer people, increasing the load on individual academics. Increased bureaucratic requirements related to external “accountability” processes further increase this burden.
The cost of housing and other living expenses have been rising faster than salaries for a long time. Academics have longer commutes. They are often living in dual-career households. The work of life maintenance is more difficult, with fewer financial resources to reduce the burden of that labour on household members.
Academics’ time is being squeezed from all directions. People are struggling to do the basic tasks of teaching and research well, in the time available. There is an epidemic of overwork. The cumulative effects of that overwork on physical health and wellbeing are increasingly apparent. The effects on mental health are also apparent. Burnout is a real illness and is on the increase. Even more people are well on their way to burnout.
This crisis requires major systemic changes.
It is not at all surprising that for many academics, peer review gets pushed down the list so far that it basically falls off. Paying for peer review will not make time magically appear in the lives of academics. It probably won’t even substantially alter the priority of peer review in their to-do lists.
Appeals to duty may afford a reprieve to a single manuscript buried on someone’s desktop (virtual or otherwise), or result in more manuscripts landing on desktops to be buried. This does not solve the problem.
Those who feel a strong sense of duty are saying yes to reviews despite all this. They usually acknowledge that they are doing too many reviews, even if they are unclear exactly where the line is for “enough”[italic]. Their knowledge of the crisis combined with their sense of duty means they find it even more difficult to cut back on this work. Their commitment to diffuse reciprocity and generational justice may mean that they factor job security and seniority into that calculation.
Those who are reviewing manuscripts promptly are likely dropping some other ball. They are not publishing as much. Or getting behind with teaching. Or overworking to an extent that is affecting their personal relationships and/or health.
Peer review is worth saving.
I have published my general views on what peer review is for and why voluntary peer review is important to academic freedom in various blog posts and in my short guide Peer Review. Although, like many commentators, I am concerned with the impact on the career prospects of early career scholars, that is not my primary concern. In my view, scholarly publishing is not primarily about collecting points to win prizes like jobs, promotions, and funding, in a manner analogous to the loyalty card that your favourite coffee shop provides. It is the means by which collective knowledge advances through communication amongst scholars. This position is outlined in “Communication vs Validation: Why are you publishing?” and discussed in more detail in another of my Short Guides: Scholarly Publishing. (Get both in one eBook: Scholarly Publishing & Peer Review) A Spotlight on Peer Review will be published on the website on 4 November.
To recap the key points:
- The advancement of knowledge is the primary function of scholarly publishing.
- Expert editorial feedback is crucial to the advancement of knowledge and academic freedom.
- Expert editorial feedback is the primary function of peer review.
- Diffuse reciprocity is the primary means by which voluntary peer review labour is rewarded.
Peer review is a crucial element of the vision of academia as a community of scholars. The neoliberal academy and commercial publishers may exploit your commitment to that vision, but that doesn’t mean it’s not a worthy vision.
Let’s not let peer review be the baby that gets thrown out with the neoliberal bathwater.
On the day I started writing this, serendipity brought my attention to the dangers of imagining the scholarly community nostalgically as a coterie, “a small exclusive group” (OED), rather than as a collective. (HT Eugenia Zuroski @zugenia on Twitter)
I am committed to the values of social justice that go beyond “diversity” to radically rethink the community of scholars. In particular, our understanding of community must acknowledge the knowledge and expertise that comes from…
the work we [marginalized thinkers] have done to accrue that knowledge by living through, and thinking through, unjust conditions of being.
(Eugenia Zuroski, “Holding Patterns: On Academic Knowledge and Labor”)
As I write, I think a first step might be to take a cue from Zuroski and replace “scholars” with “thinkers”. The institutional locus of the “community of scholars” is already troubled by tensions between universities and scholarly associations. The institutional hold on the “community of scholars” is further troubled by the ways in which universities are changing the conditions of academic employment. Commercial publishers have affected the relationship between scholarly associations and the publication of scholarly knowledge.
How does peer review fit into this radical vision?
People who share these values need to be doing peer review. You need to be doing it as editorial labour. You need to be thinking explicitly about how that editorial labour contributes to the creation of the kind of community of thinkers you want to be part of. You want to be able to trust that other people who share these values will be reviewing your manuscript.
I stand by my earlier thoughts on how to make decisions about whether to accept a particular request to peer review. DECISIONS It’s a pretty standard position. It’s not bad. It’s just incomplete. Let me begin to think about how we might modify it. I propose the following principles:
- Peer review is part of your research time.
- Prioritize quality over quantity.
- Give yourself enough time to do the emotional and cognitive work.
- Remind yourself that you are supporting the author in making their contribution.
Managing the time you allocate.
I get the impression that most people think of peer review as either not fitting into one of the 3 standard time buckets (research, teaching, admin/service) or as being some kind of service to the profession. The demands that it be paid are often accompanied by statements that make it seem as if the beneficiary of this labour is assumed to be the publisher, rather than you or your colleagues.
However, if we think through the implications of what I said above, reviewing should go in the same bucket as your other research work. If you need reviewers to publish, then the principle of diffuse reciprocity says you need to review the work of your peers to publish. If expert editorial feedback is crucial to the advancement of knowledge, you need to be giving such feedback as well as receiving it. Peer review is one of the ways you do that. You will also engage in others.
The corollary of putting peer review in your research time bucket is that the relationship between how many manuscripts you submit and how many you review goes both ways. You are considering all of the activities you need to do in the research time you have available, and how you will juggle those things.
The 3 to 1 ratio suggested in my previous post, and in many other people’s advice, is a good starting point as it’s a direct measure of diffuse reciprocity. However, as Sarah Shulist pointed out to me on Twitter, it doesn’t take into account generational and occupational justice in relation to both pressures to publish and time available.
Given the level of systemic failure, I suggest that you treat it as a starting point. If you have fewer resources and support for research, you can do less. Do something. A 1 to 1 ratio is a good start.
If you are senior, and have job security (tenure, etc), consider a 3 to 1 ratio a bare minimum and consider slowing down your output to make a higher ratio possible. If you co-author with students and post-doctoral fellows, you might consider those as “your” publications for the purposes of this calculation, even when they are the first author.
Prioritizing the quality of your reviews.
Thinking about the quantity of peer review that you do, even in relation to other research work, can lead to approaching your decisions from the position of “how many can I do in the time available”. The crisis exacerbates this tendency. However, if we are to engage in peer review as a way of engaging in a community of thinkers that doesn’t just reproduce coteries of privilege, we need to consider the time needed to do this well.
Part of the work of peer review includes managing your own emotional reactions to work that challenges you. It may trigger imposter syndrome, shame or other emotions that you’ll need to deal with separately in order to provide useful feedback.
It includes struggling with the tension between being in service to the author, and being in service to the editor, journal, and the community it represents. Your commitment to social justice and the community of thinkers reveals that gatekeeping is a political act. Always. The work of making a recommendation is not easy, and you’ll need to consider how you word things to help open the gate for the kind of thinking this author brings to the particular community represented by this journal.
You may also need to account for the emotional work involved in allowing yourself to submit reviews that do not meet the high standards you have set yourself. In an imperfect world, you will do this imperfectly. You will learn. You will improve. You learn and improve by doing, and making mistakes. You are one of several reviewers. Your review complements the others.
Being deliberate about what you say yes to.
You are not personally responsible for mitigating the effects of systemic failures. By focusing on the value of peer review, I hope to give you reasons to say yes and ways of feeling okay with the difficult choices that you will need to make.
Those values also guide your decision making about which peer review requests you will say yes to. It’s not just a number. You have a purpose.
Your practice of peer review is tied to your practice of publishing. That means that you cannot apply different values to reviewing and to publishing. The journals (and presses) you publish with are the institutional locus of (part of) your community of thinkers.
How will you contribute to and engage with your community of thinkers, as an author and as a reviewer?
Related Posts:
Peer review supports academic writing!
This post was originally sent to the newsletter on 14th October 2022. Edited and added to the Spotlight on Peer Review, October 2022.
