Peer-reviewing in Surgical Journals: Revolutionize or Perish?

Abstract

The gold standard of safe-guarding the quality of published science is peer review. However, this long-standing system has not evolved in today's digital world, where there has been an explosion in the number of publications and surgical journals. A journal's quality depends not only on the quality of papers submitted but is reflected upon the quality of its peer review process. Over the past decade journals are experiencing a rapidly escalating “peer review crisis” with editors struggling in recruiting reliable reviewers who will provide their skilled work for free with ever-diminishing incentives within today's restricted time-constraints. The problem is complex and difficult to solve, but more urgent than ever. Time is valuable and academicians, researchers and clinicians are overburdened and already extremely busy publishing their own research along with their ever growing clinical and administrative duties. Fewer and fewer individuals volunteer to provide their skilled work for free which is expected. The current incentives to review do not have a big impact on one's career and therefore are not realistic effective countermeasures. As the limits of the system are constantly stretched, there will inevitably come a “point of no return” and Surgical Journals will be the ones to first take the hit as there is an overwhelming evidence of burnout in the surgical specialties and the Surgical community is almost 50% smaller than its Medical counterpart. This review identifies the potential causes of the peer-review crisis, outlines the incentives and drawbacks of being a reviewer, summarizes the currently established common practices of rewarding reviewers and the existing and potential solutions to the problem. The magnitude of the problem and unsustainability that will make it perish are discussed along with its current flaws. Finally, recommendations are made to address many of the weaknesses of the system with the hope to revive it.

Peer‐review: the pinnacle of scholarly communication

“…There are, of course, reviewers who offer a quality review that genuinely helps to improve the article but they are a few and far between. This is not a unique problem at Colorectal Disease but echoed by others (1), in the era of burgeoning numbers of medical journals. In our busy lives, peer‐review is often a thankless task, done voluntarily during spare time and unpaid.…”

The Role of Publons in the Context of Open Peer Review

“…Smith [ 46 ] further encouraged participation in this unhealthy competition: “Sign up now to see how much better or worse you are at peer review than the colleague next to you” (p. 265). Such unhealthy competition may ultimately engender peer reviewer burnout [ 47 ].…”

«I Do Not Have Time»—Is This the End of Peer Review in Public Health Sciences?

“…Given the ubiquity and magnitude of the problem, we call for concerted strategies also of publishers to resolve it together with journal editors as they cannot do it alone. The literature discusses various incentives for reviewers, among them discounts on publishers' products, certificates, recognizing the best reviewers, increasing diversity in the peer-review process and financial incentives [5][6][7][8]. The development of reviewer recognition platforms (ORCID, Clarivate's reviewer recognition platform) is a positive example.…”