The number of papers indexed in the databases Scopus and Web of Science, for example, has recently been increasing exponentially, at a rate of 5.6 percent per year. By one estimate, researchers around the globe are devoting a collective 15,000 years of work to peer review every year—work that, if paid, would cost $1.5 billion for the share done in the US alone. Increasingly, researchers are finding it hard to donate that kind of time.
“I struggle like anything to get peer reviewers,” said Haseeb Irfanullah, who is on the editorial board of Wiley’s Learned Publishing but whose comments represent his own views as an independent consultant. Steven Mack, an editor for Human Immunology, has recently had to email around thirty researchers to find just one who would review a paper. Five years ago, he estimates it would have taken only five to 10 emails to find three willing reviewers. In this landscape, it’s not surprising that editors are assigning reviews to people who aren’t qualified or don’t have the time to concentrate on them.
In most fields, researchers need peer-reviewed publications to secure jobs and grants, so they continue to slog through the system even though it’s becoming “extremely protracted and painful,” in the words of microbiologist Sebastian Lourido from the Whitehead Institute.
Increasingly, many are advocating for change. Meanwhile, a few bold researchers have decided that the traditional publishing system just isn’t worth it anymore—AI research in particular has seen a shift toward communicating impactful findings through very informal means, like blogs.
These papers are tied to real people right? Shouldn’t those real people suffer serious consequences for wasting their time and resources?
One would think, but no. That is changing a little in some areas as AI is getting push back. I don’t know what the future holds for the academic world, but when I left it was like this:
The publish or perish world of academics rewards quantity over quality to a degree. You need to turn one set of findings into multiple papers for multiple journals, push out dozens of papers annually, push out anything to get into good journals and fall back journals, even if some don’t stick. If the science behind it is right, you’ve got a 6 month to 2 year process until it gets published. You a bullet point on a CV then. So you absolitely need to publish, or try to, early and often. If you don’t, you perish.
If you can publish, get grants, bring money and prestige to your university or department, you are rewarded. Its hard to find wrong doing, easy to turn a blind eye, or difficulty holding people accountable in the system as it exists because of these pressures and how the process actually works.
that’s how it worked before 2025. now the NIH has dried up. And it was never about “prestige”, NIH grants come with institutional overheads that used to fund the university. A $2M NIH grant could have overheads of an additional $2M to the institution, and the salaries of researchers came out of these grants, which is unique to the US system.
It is a combination of money and prestige. The grant, depending on its conditions, funding exactly how you say. But also the prestige to the PI, or grant winner, from winning large grants to fund long term projects, entire research institutes, etc.
Sounds unsustainable and toxic
In my experience, yes. Its not great. Chronicle of Higher Education and The Conversation have good articles on the publication process. The writers there do a better job exploring the process, and its pros/cons, than I can in this space.
Wrong. Academics are about citations. They care about H-index and i10 index. Many papers no one cares about do not get you anywhere.
I could have stated it better.
The quantity of publications is important. The number of citations is important. The number of high impact journals and citations in those journals is important.