State of peer review 2024

Introduction

In March 2020, we conducted a major survey of peer reviewers in the physical sciences and shared our findings with the community.

The 2020 IOP Peer Review Motivations Survey contained a number of insights into the opinions and attitudes of peer reviewers, and the results informed our IOP Publishing Peer Review Excellence Programme, which was launched at the end of that year.

Four years on, much has changed: the Covid-19 pandemic and associated lockdowns altered the way that researchers work and collaborate; the total number of scientific papers being peer reviewed and published has continued to increase; and the emergence of publicly accessible generative AI has presented new opportunities and challenges for scholarly writing.

In addition, we see a rising number of retractions and the commercialisation of research misconduct threatening a system which, for so many years, was built on trust.

Peer review underpins all scientific progress and plays a critical role in addressing major global issues. As a purpose-led scientific publisher, we want to be able to fully understand the issues facing peer reviewers today, so that we can listen and effectively respond to their evolving needs.

In March 2024, we ran the same survey from 2020, along with some extra questions. Our goals were to directly compare responses to the questions we asked our community in 2020, to see what has changed, and to gauge the opinions of the physical sciences community on topics such as generative AI, bias in peer review and double-anonymous peer review.

We present the results in full here, and welcome anyone with questions about the survey to contact peerreview@ioppublishing.org.