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.