Article-Journal

The peer review process is widely acknowledged to be susceptible to various issues, such as bias, inconsistencies and arbitrariness. However, peer reviews remain an essential aspect of scholarly communication, providing authors with valuable feedback on crucial elements of their papers, including Motivation/Impact, Soundness/Correctness, Novelty and Substance.

The effectiveness of peer reviews in academic publishing is often influenced by the balance between brevity and comprehensiveness. Reviews that are too verbose or too concise may fail to convey critical insights, reducing their utility.

The peer-review process plays a pivotal role in maintaining the quality and credibility of scientific publications. However, in recent times, there has been an increase in unhelpful and overly critical reviews, which can be detrimental to the process. This surge in unconstructive reviews can be attributed to a higher volume of paper submissions and the inclusion of inexperienced reviewers.

One key frontier of artificial intelligence (AI) is the ability to comprehend research articles and validate their findings, posing a magnanimous problem for AI systems to compete with human intelligence and intuition. As a benchmark of research validation, the existing peer-review system still stands strong despite being criticized at times by many.

Even though peer review is a central aspect of scientific communication, research shows that the process reveals a power imbalance. The position of the reviewer allows them to be harsh and intentionally offensive without being held accountable. It casts doubt on the integrity of the peer-review process and transforms it into an unpleasant and traumatic experience for authors. Accordingly, more effort should be given to provide critical and constructive feedback.

Peer Review is at the heart of scholarly communications and the cornerstone of scientific publishing. However, academia often criticizes the peer review system as non-transparent, biased, arbitrary, a flawed process at the heart of science, leading to researchers arguing with its reliability and quality. These problems could also be due to the lack of studies with the peer-review texts for various proprietary and confidentiality clauses.