---
title: "Scholarly peer review"
chunk: 8/12
source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scholarly_peer_review"
category: "reference"
tags: "science, encyclopedia"
date_saved: "2026-05-05T03:44:38.682666+00:00"
instance: "kb-cron"
---

Scholarly peer review has been subject to several criticisms, and various proposals for reforming the system have been suggested over the years. Many studies have emphasized the problems inherent to the process of peer review. Moreover, Ragone et al. have shown that there is a low correlation between peer review outcomes and the future impact measured by citations.
Various biomedical editors in particular have expressed criticism of peer review. A Cochrane review found little empirical evidence that peer review ensures quality in biomedical research, while a second systematic review and meta-analysis found a need for evidence-based peer review in biomedicine given the paucity of assessment of the interventions designed to improve the process.
To an outsider, the anonymous, pre-publication peer review process is opaque. Certain journals are accused of not carrying out stringent peer review in order to more easily expand their customer base, particularly in journals where authors pay a fee before publication. Richard Smith, MD, former editor of the British Medical Journal, has claimed that peer review is "ineffective, largely a lottery, anti-innovatory, slow, expensive, wasteful of scientific time, inefficient, easily abused, prone to bias, unable to detect fraud and irrelevant; Several studies have shown that peer review is biased against the provincial and those from low- and middle-income countries; Many journals take months and even years to publish and the process wastes researchers' time. As for the cost, the Research Information Network estimated the global cost of peer review at £1.9 billion in 2008."
Brezis and Birukou have further argued that that the process is weakened by the fact that reviewers are not investing the same amount of time to analyze the projects. This heterogeneity among referees, the two argue, will lead to seriously affect the whole peer review process, and will lead to main arbitrariness in the results of the process.
A 2024 review focused on economics identified several recurring concerns in the field’s peer-review process, including referee overreach, strategic refereeing and conflicts of interest, prestige bias, and noisy review outcomes.
In addition, Australia's Innovative Research Universities group (a coalition of seven comprehensive universities committed to inclusive excellence in teaching, learning and research in Australia) has found that "peer review disadvantages researchers in their early careers, when they rely on competitive grants to cover their salaries, and when unsuccessful funding applications often mark the end of a research idea".
Peer review publication is a common requirement for academic tenure. This requirement has been criticised on cultural grounds. In 2011, University of British Columbia assistant law professor, Lorna McCue, argued that emphasis on peer review publication was culturally inappropriate as it did not recognize the importance of Indigenous oral traditions. In 2018, the British Columbia Human Rights Tribunal found that this complaint was not justified . 
There is an ongoing discussion about a peer-review crisis. In 2022 Inside Higher Ed reported a serious shortage of scholars to review submitted articles and bigger structural problems amplified by the COVID-19 pandemic.

=== Tendency to discourage innovative projects ===
Brezis and Birukou have argued that a major issues in the peer process is that referees display homophily in their taste and perception of innovative ideas. This means that reviewers who are developing conventional ideas tend to give low grades to more innovative projects, while reviewers who develop innovative ideas tend, by homophily, to give higher grades to innovative projects.
Similarly, peer review is more problematic when choosing the projects to be funded since innovative projects are not highly ranked in the existing peer-review process. The peer-review process leads to conformity, i.e., the selection of less controversial projects and papers. This may even influence the type of proposals scholars will propose, since scholars need to find financing for their research as discussed by Martin, 1997: "A common informal view is that it is easier to obtain funds for conventional projects. Those who are eager to get funding are not likely to propose radical or unorthodox projects. Since you don't know who the referees are going to be, it is best to assume that they are middle-of-the-road. Therefore, the middle-of-the-road application is safer".