Peer review has always depended on a remarkable assumption: that researchers will continue giving their time, expertise, and intellectual effort to evaluate the work of others, often alongside demanding research, teaching, clinical, and administrative responsibilities. For decades, the system has relied on that willingness, but willingness should not be mistaken for unlimited capacity.
The pressure on peer review is becoming increasingly difficult to ignore. Submission volumes continue to stretch editorial workflows, experienced reviewers receive repeated invitations, and editors often struggle to secure the right expertise within reasonable timelines. The conversation naturally turns to finding more reviewers, but I believe that is only part of the answer. The future of peer review will depend just as much on reviewer support: how well we support researchers already contributing, how effectively we prepare new reviewers, and whether the system creates conditions that make continued participation realistic.
We need to move from finding reviewers to building reviewers
Most researchers are trained extensively to conduct research. Far fewer receive comparable preparation for evaluating it. Yet when the first peer review invitation arrives, the expectations can be substantial. A reviewer may be asked to assess whether the methods are appropriate, whether the conclusions follow from the evidence, whether important literature is missing, whether ethical concerns need to be raised, and whether the manuscript contributes meaningfully to its field. They must then turn that assessment into a clear, constructive manuscript review that is useful to both the editor and the author.
For many researchers, there is no formal transition into this responsibility. They learn through a supervisor, an informal co-review, advice from colleagues, or simply through experience. Access to good mentorship and practical reviewer support varies considerably across disciplines, institutions, and research communities. Scientific peer review should not depend on whether someone happens to work with the right senior researcher or gain access to the right professional network. Support for peer reviewers needs to include clearer pathways into reviewing, opportunities to observe experienced reviewers, structured practice, and guidance before researchers are expected to make independent judgments.
Recent efforts to formalize co-review and mentoring point in the right direction because they acknowledge something the system has often left implicit: good reviewers are developed. Expanding the reviewer pool without building those pathways may increase the number of researchers available to invite, but it does not necessarily strengthen the quality or sustainability of peer review. For publishers and journals considering the future of peer review, reviewer development therefore needs to sit alongside reviewer discovery. For researchers entering peer review, clearer pathways into the role are equally important. Our guide on how to become a peer reviewer looks at practical ways researchers can begin building that experience.
Reviewer support cannot stop once someone becomes experienced
Support for peer reviewers is sometimes framed primarily as an early-career need. In practice, experienced reviewers face a different set of pressures rather than an absence of them. Research methods become more specialized, interdisciplinary manuscripts require broader judgment, publication ethics continues to evolve, and artificial intelligence is creating new questions around authorship, confidentiality, research integrity, and responsible reviewing.
At the same time, the underlying constraint remains limited expert time. Every unnecessary administrative step competes with the intellectual work that peer review requires, which makes better workflows an important part of reducing reviewer fatigue. A reviewer should spend their energy assessing whether the research question is meaningful, whether the methods answer it, whether the evidence supports the conclusions, and what could make the manuscript stronger. Reviewer support should therefore include clearer expectations, accessible guidance, efficient systems, and technology that reduces routine work without replacing expert judgment.
Carefully designed artificial intelligence can contribute here. It can help organize information, surface issues for further examination, support reference checks, or reduce repetitive work during manuscript review. The intellectual and ethical responsibility for interpreting those findings must remain with the reviewer. Used in this way, technology can contribute to reducing reviewer fatigue by protecting more of the reviewer’s time for the work that genuinely requires expertise.
Recognition needs to be part of support for peer reviewers
There is a persistent tension within the peer review system. Reviewing is widely regarded as an essential contribution to research quality, yet much of that contribution remains difficult to demonstrate professionally. A researcher may complete dozens of reviews across several years and still have limited portable evidence of that work. The activity often remains within individual journal systems, even though the skills involved in manuscript review develop across a researcher’s career. Confidentiality should remain protected, but it does not require reviewer contributions to remain invisible. Systems such as ORCID’s peer review recognition workflow show how verified reviewing activity can form part of a researcher’s professional record without revealing confidential manuscript information.
Recognition should therefore be understood as one component of reviewer support rather than a symbolic addition to it. It gives researchers a way to demonstrate sustained contribution, makes reviewing experience more visible across institutions and journals, and helps establish peer review as a professional capability that develops over time. It is also relevant to reducing reviewer fatigue. Recognition by itself will not address workload, but a system that repeatedly draws on researchers’ expertise while offering little training, feedback, visibility, or acknowledgment creates weak incentives for continued participation.
Peer review needs stronger professional communities
Peer review is a collective scholarly system, but much of the work is carried out individually. Researchers across disciplines encounter similar questions about reviewing: how detailed a report should be, how to approach a methodological weakness, when an issue should be raised privately with an editor, how to evaluate work that crosses disciplinary boundaries, or how to make criticism rigorous without making it unnecessarily harsh. Many reviewers still work through these questions alone.
Support for peer reviewers should therefore include access to professional communities where researchers can discuss the practice of reviewing, learn from experienced colleagues, compare approaches, and develop their judgment without compromising manuscript confidentiality. This is particularly relevant to the future of peer review because reviewer development cannot depend indefinitely on informal personal networks. If academic publishing wants a broader and more globally distributed reviewer pool, learning and professional support also need to become more accessible.
This is one of the principles behind ReviewerOne. We are building around the view that reviewer support should bring together practical tools, structured learning, professional recognition, community, and responsible AI assistance. The objective is to help researchers develop as reviewers and sustain their participation in peer review, rather than simply create another database of people who can receive invitations.
The reviewer shortage is also a reviewer development problem
When an editor cannot secure appropriate reviewers, the visible problem is an unfilled assignment. The underlying causes are broader. Have enough researchers been given opportunities to learn how to review? Do early-career researchers have credible entry points into the system? Is reviewer expertise concentrated within familiar networks? Are qualified researchers outside those networks visible to editors? Are workflows designed with reducing reviewer fatigue in mind? Does continued reviewing provide researchers with development, recognition, and professional value?
Looking at reviewer shortages through this lens changes how the problem is addressed. Better reviewer discovery remains necessary, but sustainable peer review also requires stronger reviewer development and long-term support for peer reviewers. The future of peer review therefore depends on more than increasing the number of invitations that can be sent. Academic publishing needs to build reviewer capacity deliberately by preparing new reviewers, supporting experienced ones, widening access to opportunities, making expertise easier to identify, and recognizing sustained contributions.
Peer review will continue to depend on human judgment because evaluating research requires interpretation, disciplinary knowledge, context, and accountability. Technology can support manuscript review, and publishers can improve the systems around it, but the credibility of the process will continue to rest on the researchers contributing that judgment. If we want that contribution to remain sustainable, reviewer support has to become part of the infrastructure of peer review rather than something offered only when individual reviewers struggle.
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ReviewerOne brings together AI-assisted peer review tools, reviewer development, community, recognition, and verified reviewer profiles to support researchers throughout their reviewing journey.
