I used to think it was merely a post-COVID19 hiccough, but the extensive delays in receiving reviews for submitted manuscripts that I am seeing near constantly now are the symptoms of a much larger problem. That problem is, in a nutshell, how awfully journals are treating both authors and reviewers these days.
I regularly hear stories from editors handling my papers, as well as accounts from colleagues, about the ridiculous number of review requests they send with no response. It isn’t uncommon to hear that editors ask more than 50 people for a review (yes, you read that correctly), to no avail. Even when the submitting authors provide a list of potential reviewers, it doesn’t seem to help.
The ensuing delays in time to publication are really starting to hurt people, and the most common victims are early career researchers needing to build up their publication track records to secure grants and jobs. And the underhanded, dickhead tactic to reset the submission clock by calling a ‘major review’ a ‘rejection with opportunity to resubmit’ doesn’t fucking fool anyone. The ‘average time from submission to publication’ claimed by most journals is a boldface lie because of their surreptitious manipulation of handling statistics.
The most obese pachyderm in the room is, of course, the extortionary prices (and it is nothing short of extortion) charged for publishing in most academic journals these days. For example, I had to spend more than AU$17,000.00 to publish a single open-access paper in Nature Geoscience last year. That was just for one paper. Never again.
Anyone with even a vestigial understanding of economics feels utterly exploited when asked to review a paper for nothing. As far as I am aware, there isn’t a reputable journal out there that pays for peer reviews. As a whole, academics are up-to-fucking-here with this arrangement, so it should come as no surprise that editors are struggling to find reviewers.
The fact too that the number of submissions keeps rising because of our institutional obsession with publication frequency means that we are being asked more and more to do a lot of work for free.
How can we possibly reverse this trend and get back to a more realistic and fair model of publication?
There is no shortage of proposed alternatives, but I fear most of these will never come to pass, mainly because journals have us firmly by the short and curlies.
Why? The reason we can’t seem to break out of the vice is because we are compelled to publish in the highest-impact journals as much as possible, to the exclusion of almost all else. So, with such a huge demand to get published, the journals can charge whatever they want because there is a guaranteed supply of punters willing to fork over the cash. Capitalist free-market dynamics 101: high demand = insane prices.
Something has to give, and I’m not sure what that will look like. In the meantime, however, there are a few things I can suggest journals could do to alleviate the challenge of finding reviewers. I also provide a list of things individual authors can do to reduce the probability that reviewer ‘shortages’ don’t bite too hard.
What journals can do
1. Drop your prices
The most important, yet least likely change needed is for journals to stop charging so much to publish papers in their journals. The now common practice is a vile and repugnant act of pure extortion. All major scientific publishing companies are publicly listed profit monsters that don’t give a shit about academic quality or fair treatment — they care only how much profit they make. I have no illusion that my little blog post is going to change any company policies, but there are things we can do to hit these profiteering bastards where it hurts (see below).
2. Pay reviewers
Another most likely unrealistic pipe dream is that journals pay their reviewers. There are many proposed models for how such a system could work that would be fair, maintain some profits (cringe), and ensure objectivity. But until someone actually tries the approach, there’s no way the reviewer crisis will suddenly disappear.
3. Quicker turnaround
Do not take weeks, or sometimes even months, to make a decision not to send a manuscript to review. If you have no intention of reviewing a manuscript, tell the authors immediately, and don’t just string them along. This decision should be made in days (ideally, less than 24 hours) following submission.
4. Actually edit
This might sound intuitive, but apparently it’s not obvious to many editors: editors must actually edit. ‘Editing’ does not mean collecting reviews and defaulting to the decision of the worst reviewer. Editing means the editor has to read the paper, weigh up the diverse viewpoints, and decide what are the most important components required to get the manuscript up to a minimum standard imposed by the journal. Having already made the decision to review the paper, the editor’s job is to do everything possible to find ways to accept the manuscript, not dump it.
5. Pay editors
Most editors do the onerous job of editing hundreds of manuscripts for no monetary recompense whatsoever (just like the reviewers they’re struggling to commission). The expression ‘you get what you pay for’ is most apt here. See previous recommendation.
6. Kill the transfer insult
Again, this is probably a pipe dream, but do not suggest I transfer my manuscript to a lower-impact, pay-only journal in your profiteering ‘family of journals’. It’s just insulting.
7. Stop lying about handling times
Stop the bullshit handling-time manipulation. The time from submission to publication is the time from first submission until publication, full stop.
8. Publish immediately
Once a paper is accepted, publish the damn thing immediately, not in 2, 6, or 16 weeks. It’s an insult to authors that they have to wait not only for the lengthy review, but also a completely unjustified delay after acceptance. I don’t give a flying fuck if the paper isn’t in its final form — at least publish the accepted version with a working digital object identifier (DOI) as soon as you send us that lovely e-mail starting with “It is our pleasure to inform you that your paper … has been accepted for publication in … “.
9. Accept pre-prints
I know there aren’t many journals left who refuse to accept manuscripts if there is an accompanying pre-print, but there are some (in fact, I only recently had a paper rejected at the doorstep because of a journal’s anachronistic, fuckwit policy not to play the pre-print game). To you, I say, ‘just fuck off’. Not only are you bucking the widely accepted trend, you are deliberately making it difficult for those papers to see the publication light of day (even in non-peer-reviewed form).
What submitting authors can do
You probably think that as a submitting author, you have almost no power to change the system. I agree. But you do at least wield a little influence.
10. Demand regular updates
Try to avoid the hopelessness and impotence about not knowing why a journal is taking so long to move your manuscript from ‘under consideration’ to some other vague, but at least progressive, next stage. It is absolutely within your rights to demand editors provide regular updates on your manuscript, and the reasons for any undue delays. If the reason is ‘we can’t find reviewers’ as is now becoming a stock response, offer to help (see next items).
11. Provide a long, well-supported reviewer shopping list
I do this now almost for every submission as a matter of course. Whether it’s via a journal’s online submission system, in my cover letter, or both, I now provide a long list of potential reviewers that I deem suitable to review my work. But don’t abuse this opportunity by just recommending your mates (editors can see right through that puerile ruse at just a glance). Only choose people who are independent (with whom you have never, or least not within the last 5 years, published), properly qualified (don’t suggest your sister-in-law, unless she’s the uncontested top expert in the field, and even then, reconsider), and not from your same institution, for obvious reasons.
I’m also tending to go a step farther now by contacting potential reviewers beforehand and warning them that I’d like to put forward their names, and “pretty please would you mind terribly if you could take some time to review my paper, thank-you-from-the-bottom-of-my-heart?”
Finally, once you accumulate your list of names, make a backup ‘plan B’ list of other people.
12. Avoid the worst journals
If a journal has a history of being a bad player, then avoid submitting to them. This could be journals that charge the most, journals who are notoriously slow, journals known to ’employ’ gatekeeper editors, journals from societies that make stupid decisions (e.g., journals of the Royal Society, who refuses to remove a neonazi from its fellowship). The latter example notwithstanding, many are suggesting that society journals generally offer the best combination of attributes.
Scientists should consider boycotting publishing in and reviewing for @royalsociety.org journalsI certainly have. They are now on my permanent shit list. There are plenty of other journals in which to publish your work, and where neonazis aren't welcome
— Corey Bradshaw (@conservbytes.bsky.social) 2025-03-26T14:08:48.587Z
13. Don’t play their bait-and-switch game
See item 6 above. If a journal helpfully suggests transferring your article to one of its pay-only sister journals, tell them politely to fuck right off. This is a blatant attempt to suck cash out of you.
14. Appeal
If the journal’s ‘final’ decision is ‘no, bugger off’, don’t just take it sitting down (read more on dealing with rejection). I have written an entire post on this subject, but in brief, the higher the journal’s reputation, the better the chance a well-reasoned appeal will be successful.
15. Be historically honest
If you have had a bad experience during a review process, sometimes it’s not worth the appeal. Instead, submit elsewhere, but do not fear explaining to the new journal’s editor a little about your paper’s history and why you think you were treated unfairly (e.g., one reviewer was horrible, and the editor didn’t actually edit). Being honest about your paper’s history, warts and all, can often provide needed context for a new editor instead of starting from scratch.
Be warned though — if it wasn’t clear to someone at first submission why your article was sound, the onus on you is to submit a better version, or another reviewer is likely to raise the same issues. What’s that saying? — If you keep doing the same thing over and over expecting a different result, then you are …
16. Refuse to enable the worst offenders
In addition to avoiding submissions to evil journals, you can also refuse to review for them when requested (I know, this will only exacerbate the reviewer crisis, but something has to give). I have personally boycotted reviewing for many journals now because of their behaviour, and I’ve made my reasons for refusal clear when responding to their requests, so they get the message that their behavior (or at least, the behavior of their parent company) is unacceptable.
You can also wield your power as an academic by refusing to cite papers in your own work, no matter how good or on-point they are, if they are published in badly behaving journals. There are ALWAYS alternative papers to cite. Journal reputations are built on citations, which leads some to abuse that reputation by charging outlandish fees. Hit them where it hurts.
17. Always pre-print
See item nine above. Make it a habit to publish pre-prints before submitting the manuscript itself to a journal. At least the paper is out there and can be cited (with a DOI). Preprints have other advantages too.
There is no silver bullet to this mess, but I encourage academics to stand up for themselves and not just bow down to the bloated publishing gods every time they make another stupid demand.
But I might be jaded.
CJA Bradshaw
