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1. The present and future of peer review: Ideas, interventions, and evidence

   https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2401232121  

   Aczel, Balazs; Barwich, Ann-Sophie; Diekman, Amanda B; Fishbach, Ayelet; Goldstone, Robert L; Gomez, Pablo; Gundersen, Odd Erik; von_Hippel, Paul T; Holcombe, Alex O; Lewandowsky, Stephan; et al (February 2025, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences)

   What is wrong with the peer review system? Is peer review sustainable? Useful? What other models exist? These are central yet contentious questions in today’s academic discourse. This perspective critically discusses alternative models and revisions to the peer review system. The authors highlight possible changes to the peer review system, with the goal of fostering further dialog among the main stakeholders, including producers and consumers of scientific research. Neither our list of identified issues with the peer review system nor our discussed resolutions are complete. A point of agreement is that fair assessment and efficient change would require more comprehensive and rigorous data on the various aspects of the peer review system. 

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2. Preprint Peer Review Enhances Undergraduate Biology Students' Disciplinary Literacy and Sense of Belonging in STEM

   https://doi.org/10.1128/jmbe.00053-23  

   Otto, Josie L.; McDowell, Gary S.; Balgopal, Meena M.; Lijek, Rebeccah S. (August 2023, Journal of Microbiology & Biology Education)

   McCartney, Melissa (Ed.)

   Education about scientific publishing and manuscript peer review is not universally provided in undergraduate science courses. Since peer review is integral to the scientific process and central to the identity of a scientist, we envision a paradigm shift where teaching peer review becomes integral to undergraduate science education. 

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3. Why ex post peer review encourages high-risk research while ex ante review discourages it

   https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2111615118  

   Gross, Kevin; Bergstrom, Carl T. (December 2021, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences)

   Peer review is an integral component of contemporary science. While peer review focuses attention on promising and interesting science, it also encourages scientists to pursue some questions at the expense of others. Here, we use ideas from forecasting assessment to examine how two modes of peer review—ex ante review of proposals for future work and ex post review of completed science—motivate scientists to favor some questions instead of others. Our main result is that ex ante and ex post peer review push investigators toward distinct sets of scientific questions. This tension arises because ex post review allows investigators to leverage their own scientific beliefs to generate results that others will find surprising, whereas ex ante review does not. Moreover, ex ante review will favor different research questions depending on whether reviewers rank proposals in anticipation of changes to their own personal beliefs or to the beliefs of their peers. The tension between ex ante and ex post review puts investigators in a bind because most researchers need to find projects that will survive both. By unpacking the tension between these two modes of review, we can understand how they shape the landscape of science and how changes to peer review might shift scientific activity in unforeseen directions. 

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4. Integrating Community Live Reviews into Academic Publishing: Five Case Studies

   https://doi.org/10.31219/osf.io/fteu8_v1  

   Petkov, Chris; Fairhurst, Vanessa; Granados, Monica; Chudasama, Yogita; Rodney, Gail; Jabeen, Sayeda; David, Stephen; Mitchell, Anna; Klink, P Christiaan; Mehmani, Bahar; et al (June 2025, Open Science Framework)

   Academic peer review is fundamental for scientific knowledge dissemination, and various initiatives are exploring how the peer-review process could be more open, efficient and rewarding. We report five case studies where a live community-based review session was integrated into the editorial workflow of an academic journal (Current Research in Neurobiology; CRNEUR). Five manuscripts, submitted as preprints, underwent Live Review—a structured collaborative review session led by PREreview, an open science project advancing openness in scholarly evaluation. With each case, PREreview team members facilitated a 90-minute online discussion where registered participants provided real-time discussion and worked together on an online structured peer-review document. Authors could join as observers or to answer questions, and journal editors could join as observers. Participants then volunteered to write up the session notes into a final review and summary statement. Review participants had the option to sign the review. The finalized review was then published on PREreview’s open preprint review platform approximately two weeks after the Live Review session. The published review was assigned a Digital Object Identifier (DOI) for participating reviewers to obtain credit for their reviewing effort. The published review was then incorporated into CRNEUR’s editorial process to inform editorial decisions. Results suggest that the speed of this community review can be as rapid as the standard peer-review process for CRNEUR during the same time period, and a small sample size survey of the Live Review pilots attendees showed agreement on several questions including the review being respectful, time efficient and scientifically rigorous. We discuss how live, community-based review approaches could be further developed, scaled and sustained. 

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5. Challenges, experiments, and computational solutions in peer review

   https://doi.org/10.1145/3528086  

   Shah, Nihar B. (June 2022, Communications of the ACM)

   Improving the peer review process in a scientific manner shows promise. 

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