The Global Burden of Journal Peer Review in the Biomedical Literature: Strong Imbalance in the Collective Enterprise.

ABSTRACT: The growth in scientific production may threaten the capacity for the scientific community to handle the ever-increasing demand for peer review of scientific publications. There is little evidence regarding the sustainability of the peer-review system and how the scientific community copes with the burden it poses. We used mathematical modeling to estimate the overall quantitative annual demand for peer review and the supply in biomedical research. The modeling was informed by empirical data from various sources in the biomedical domain, including all articles indexed at MEDLINE. We found that for 2015, across a range of scenarios, the supply exceeded by 15% to 249% the demand for reviewers and reviews. However, 20% of the researchers performed 69% to 94% of the reviews. Among researchers

SUBMITTER: Kovanis M 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5104353 | biostudies-literature | 2016

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature