A selection of our authors describe how they see the peer review process evolving in the future, and discuss what change has already taken place.

Author 1: Reviews now are much better structured than they used to be. I don’t of course have access to the reviewer template that Cambridge University Press gives to reviewers, but judging by their responses, it is very well thought out. Appointing a chief reviewer might be helpful in reconciling conflicting views.

Author 2: I don’t see much change and I wish there won’t be. Peer review – with its problems – is the bedrock of knowledge making.

Author 3: I think it will become more difficult to keep things anonymous, which may make it more difficult for younger scholars. I hope there is more generosity of spirit and less territoriality in the process.

Author 4: For journals in my field, I’d hope to see some speeding up of the review process — Linguistics sometimes takes a ridiculously long time to get reviews back to the author, and so there is a long lag between writing and actual publication.

For textbooks, this is more complicated: you need information from people in the field, users of various textbooks, so you can get useful comparisons; and ideally, you need reviews that are balanced, both theoretically and empirically. For books, monographs, you need someone who can appreciate new perspectives on a field and can see what a new monograph might contribute.  

What changes do we need as a result? This is less clear to me. I have, for the most part, excellent reviews and reviewers; reviews that have been helpful in pointing to new directions and raising relevant issues where these haven’t been addressed. So, I see peer reviewing as essential to all publication. One thing might be to ask older people in a field to recommend younger, newer members as potential reviewers. This is something we can all do.

Author 5: One evolution I have noticed in my field is an increasing emphasis on anti-racist reviewing. In my field, scholars have recently put together a guide to “Anti-Racist Scholarly Reviewing Practices,” from which I have learned a lot: https://tinyurl.com/reviewheuristic

Author 6: I think the core of the process has been unchanged for many years and will probably remain the same going forward; there are not many different ways in which you can ask multiple interested parties to comment on a piece of written work. One thing that I would like to see is greater recognition for reviewing within institutions, as reviewing often ends up being evening and weekend work. Publons may be a good start. I also wonder whether anonymous reviewing will soon be a thing of the past, as newer journals are taking an open approach.

Author 7: I think, especially with the increasing trend towards open science, that peer review should also be more open. I believe that the main reason why some reviewers allow themselves to give very harsh comments sometimes is because of anonymity. But if the names of the reviewers were not hidden (only the author would remain anonymous during the reviewing process), then maybe the comments would truly be more constructive.

Author 8: There has been a discussion for some time whether we should continue with the double- (or single-) blind reviewing. I’d certainly be willing to reveal my name as a reviewer and would be interested in knowing who reviewed my work. Whether we should know as reviewers the names of authors is much more controversial: here it might be very hard to avoid a bias of some sort.

Author 9: Peer reviewers are difficult to get, especially in Covid times. I know a number of emeritus scholars who do not want to peer review articles. I think that having retired scholars as reviewers is very valuable. They have the necessary knowledge if they have been around for a long time and they tend to see things more openly.

Author 10: With respect to Cambridge University Press book reviews, I value the fact the publisher and the editorial team is highly professional. Therefore, this should stay the same and serve as a model to other publishers.  As more authors from different parts of the world publish with Cambridge, the changes I’d like to see are the inclusion of reviewers from across research contexts, and whose working languages are not solely English. This is certainly something that is already happening, and hopefully this trend continues to expand in the future.