Owen Yang
Do you remember there was a time when we needed to print out the manuscript and physically sent two copies to the journals?
At least in medicine, I believe there is a relative lack of reviewers to review manuscripts at the moment, making it difficult to publish your research, especially when your research is not easy on the eyes at the first sight.
I find there could be troubles on both the demand and the supply side.
Increasing number of academic publications
I know in most countries, implicitly or explicitly, the quantity and quality of published articles have become an ‘objective’ measure of how well a scientist is. I am too young to know when it started, but likely it would be around the year 2000. The number of publication affects whether a scientist can get a promotion, get a job, or get a research funding.
Because research articles are a currency for a scientific career, there is a rapid increase in publishing companies and academic journals, when everything is processed and stored electronically and article production cost reduces. Because journals are only published online (instead of paperback ones), there is unlimited space to publish articles.
Increasing need for reviewers
The current scientific article is based on a ‘peer review’ system. When one submit a manuscript, the editorial team consider whether there is a chance for publication. When there is potential chance of accepting the manuscript, the editorial team will send the manuscript to ”peer reviewers” who are experts in related fields of that research. The reviewers review the manuscript and give their expert opinions of this manuscript, and their reviews help the editorial team to decide whether this manuscript tells a story that is scientifically sound or relevant.
So now we have many more people submit their manuscripts to many more journals available, to be published with much more space available. The demand for peer reviewers has understandably increased substantially.
Short of supply of reviewers
I admit that I have turned down many manuscripts due to the fact that there is no time anymore. There are so many thing I need to do, and reviewing a manuscript unpaid is not one of them at the top priority.
I also tend not to gain much from reviewing. I am not one of the prestigious scientists, and therefore I have never had the chance to review a study that is truly insight-generating, let alone ground breaking. it is clear to me that I am almost always asked to review a manuscript from which I can learn very little, and gain very little sense of achievement. After reviewing, I do not feel I contribute to the scientific society.
To save a decent middle-range journals
What will happen now is only the ‘prestigious’ journals can afford to get reviewers to review. The worst affected journals are the decent middle-ranged journals that are willing to publish decent studies that are not necessarily ground-breaking. The worst affected scientists, in my opinion, are the ones who conduct and try to publish decent studies that are very nice small piece of credible evidence, but not as money-dense to generate massive data.
These are the journals and the studies that I would feel most like to spend time writing a review for.
