Over 30 organizations from around the world are gearing up to participate in this year's Peer Review Week (PRW), an annual event that celebrates the value of peer review and brings together stakeholders in scholarly communication. Taking place from September 25-29, 2023, PRW will focus on the theme "Peer Review and The Future of Publishing." Through various events and activities, participants will shed light on the evolving publishing landscape and the crucial role that peer review plays in shaping scholarly communication.
The theme for Peer Review Week was determined through an open global poll conducted over six weeks, with the scholarly community casting their votes. The results revealed that the top choice was "Peer Review and the Future of Publishing," capturing 32.1% of the votes. Other options included "Ethical Issues in Peer Review" with 25.7%, "Peer Review and Technology" with 25.5%, and "Peer Review and the Researcher Experience" with 16.6%.
Scholarly publishing is currently undergoing rapid and transformative changes driven by new policies, business models, technologies, and a growing emphasis on transparency and reproducibility. In the United States, government agencies are grappling with how to comply with the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) memo, which calls for free, immediate, and equitable access to federally funded research by 2026. Additionally, next year will see the full implementation of Plan S, which will end financial support for transformative agreements.
The emergence of easily accessible natural language processing tools, such as ChatGPT, raises new ethical and practical considerations. Non-article research outputs, including data, methods, and code, are gaining significance and transitioning from supporting documentation to citable artifacts that are formally preserved in the scientific record. Peer reviewers are facing increasing demands on their time and expertise, making it more challenging to secure reviewers. The COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated these trends, signaling a paradigm shift in scholarly publishing.
Despite these seismic shifts, peer review itself remains largely unchanged in terms of its value to the scholarly community and its day-to-day practice in journals. Peer review serves as the primary method through which journals assess the rigor, credibility, and potential interest of research submitted for publication. However, what does the changing publishing landscape mean for the practice of peer review and for the peer reviewers themselves?
Roohi Ghosh, co-chair of the Peer Review Week committee, comments, "This is a really timely moment to pause and think about what the future of journal publishing might look like, and the role of peer review in that. Are there opportunities to streamline, to create efficiencies, and reduce redundancy? To become less siloed and more collaborative as an industry? To apply technologies in a way that serves unbiased assessment and reduces the burden on reviewers?"
The scholarly community and anyone interested in advancing quality research are invited to join Peer Review Week to celebrate and participate in this learning experience. Activities may include blog posts, videos, podcasts, infographics, and more. Those interested in submitting items for promotion can do so through the online form provided.
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