Page 4 - Straive eBook: Redefining Your Peer Review Experience

4 Straive | Redefining Your Peer Review Experience

WHITEPAPER 1
Peer Review

Management —

Challenges &

Opportunities

Over a period where production services have
been radically streamlined and automated, the
peer review workflow has remained relatively
unchanged. Those interested in scholarly
communication are rightly asking questions
about why and how peer review could be
tackled to alleviate pressure on over-stretched
researchers as well as reduce the time articles
spend in the limbo of peer review. This report
touches briefly on each stage of the peer
review workflow, highlighting challenges and
helpful technologies at each point.

Publishing processes between acceptance
and publication have transformed in the
last decade through standardization and
automation of production as well as preview
publication in place of traditional issue-based
approaches. Publishers have pushed the
limits on cost efficiencies and time to market.
Upstream processes between submission and
acceptance have received some attention, but
the changes have been incremental rather
than radical. The increase in submissions
seen through 2020 and into 2021 and the
growth of preprints as substitutes for formal
publication suggest that the time is ripe for a
fresh look at this challenge. This report brings
together stakeholder perspectives to discuss
some big questions, including what an
efficient peer review process looks like, how
publishers could better manage questions of
research integrity, how the burden of peer
review could be more equitably distributed,
and what role technology has to play in the
future of peer review.