Beyond structural fixes: Expectations of Chinese academics for structural and interactional reform in peer review

Beyond structural fixes: Expectations of Chinese academics for structural and interactional reform in peer review | Research Square window.SnipcartSettings = { analytics: { enabled: false } }; (function() { var accessVector = localStorage.getItem('access_vector') || ''; window.dataLayer = window.dataLayer || []; if (accessVector) { window.dataLayer.push({ user: { profile: { profileInfo: { snid: accessVector } } } }); } })(); (function(w,d,s,l,i){w[l]=w[l]||[];w[l].push({'gtm.start':new Date().getTime(),event:'gtm.js'});var f=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0],j=d.createElement(s),dl=l!='dataLayer'?'&l='+l:'';j.async=true;j.src='https://www.googletagmanager.com/gtm.js?id='+i+dl;f.parentNode.insertBefore(j,f);})(window,document,'script','dataLayer','GTM-K279D39R'); Browse Preprints In Review Journals COVID-19 Preprints AJE Video Bytes Research Tools Research Promotion AJE Professional Editing AJE Rubriq About Preprint Platform In Review Editorial Policies Our Team Advisory Board Help Center Sign In Submit a Preprint Cite Share Download PDF Research Article Beyond structural fixes: Expectations of Chinese academics for structural and interactional reform in peer review Pengjuan Wang This is a preprint; it has not been peer reviewed by a journal. https://doi.org/ 10.21203/rs.3.rs-8409119/v1 This work is licensed under a CC BY 4.0 License Status: Posted Version 1 posted You are reading this latest preprint version Abstract Peer review is the central mechanism through which academic publishing ensures manuscript quality, yet it continues to face criticism for inefficiency, limited effectiveness, and various biases. Although many reform strategies have been proposed, they mostly focus on structural adjustments or on interventions targeting the roles of authors, reviewers, and editors, leaving researchers’ perspectives insufficiently explored. To address this gap, this study adopts an integrated institutional lens and conducts qualitative interviews with 41 Chinese academics to examine their expectations for improving peer review in international journals. The findings show that researchers generally expect stronger feedback mechanisms, greater procedural fairness, higher review quality, wider reuse of review reports, and responsible use of artificial intelligence. At the same time, they experience tensions related to unclear responsibility boundaries between reviewers and editors, conflicting demands among different stakeholders, inconsistent standards for reviewing responsibilities, and contradictions in reward and sanction practices. These tensions are closely shaped and intensified by broader scientific environments beyond peer review. By foregrounding researchers’ perceptions and experiences, the study offers evidence-based insights for developing more grounded and context-sensitive peer review reform strategies. peer review Chinese academics institutional theory expectation reviewer Introduction Peer review is the core mechanism of academic publishing and has long been regarded as the “gold standard” of knowledge production within the academic community (Mayden, 2012 ). Despite its well-established status, the system remains subject to persistent critique regarding its efficiency, effectiveness, and susceptibility to various forms of bias (Heesen & Bright, 2021 ; Horta & Jung, 2024 ; Tennant & Ross-Hellauer, 2020 ). In response to the perceived “crisis” of journal peer review, publishers and researchers have proposed a wide range of reform strategies. These include promoting open or collaborative peer review and other innovative review models (Ghildiyal, 2025 ; Henriquez, 2023 ; Kwon et al., 2018 ); incorporating AI and other technological tools to enhance review quality and timeliness (Kousha & Thelwall, 2024 ; Overcash, 2025 ); offering professional training programs for reviewers (Buser et al., 2023 ); and providing more explicit forms of recognition and incentives to sustain reviewer participation (Ellwanger & Chies, 2020 ; Gasparyan et al., 2015 ; Yu et al., 2024 ) and so on. While these initiatives have generated valuable insights, most of them focus either on structural and procedural modifications to the peer-review system – such as the development of new peer-review models – or on interactional interventions aiming at shaping the role responsibilities of authors, reviewers, and editors, such as strengthening reviewers’ motivation. However, there remains a lack of an integrative framework that brings these two perspectives together, and the voices of researchers, as the core participants, have largely been overlooked (Tennant & Ross-Hellauer, 2020 ). To address this gap, this study adopts an institutional perspective and conceptualizes journal peer review as an academic institution. It examines the expectations and suggestions put forward by Chinese academics who participate in peer review both as reviewers and as authors. This study raised two research questions: RQ1 How do Chinese academics perceive and expect improvements in the structural aspects of journal peer review? RQ2 How do Chinese academics perceive and expect improvements in the interactional practices of journal peer review? By foregrounding practitioners’ experiences and voices, this study aims to shed light on the institutional norms and interactional contradictions that shape peer-review practices so as to reflect the feasibility of proposed reform measures. Such insights have the potential to inform more coherent and sustainable reforms of the journal peer-review system. Literature review Structural reforms in peer review The structural reforms in peer review are grounded in the assumption that the major problems of journal peer review stem from its traditional forms and institutional arrangements, which are increasingly misaligned with the rapid expansion of scientific research and the surging volume of research publications (Horta & Jung, 2024 ). From this perspective, enhancing the efficiency and effectiveness of peer review requires diversifying its organizational models and procedural formats. Typical reforms developed under this logic include open peer review, collaborative peer review, and AI-assisted peer review. Open peer review aims to align peer-review practices more closely with the principles of Open Science (Ross-Hellauer, 2017 ). Despite the absence of a clear, standardized, and widely shared definition (Ross-Hellauer, 2017 ), open peer review initiatives generally seek to increase transparency in what has traditionally been a “black-box” process. This is achieved through practices such as removing anonymity for authors and/or reviewers, publishing reviewer reports, enabling wider community participation in the review process, and facilitating direct reciprocal communication between reviewers, or between reviewers and authors (Wolfram et al., 2020 ). In 2025, for example, Nature announced that all newly accepted manuscripts would be published together with reviewer reports and author responses, representing a significant step toward open peer review (Nature, 2025 ). Collaborative peer review refers to a model in which multiple reviewers are invited to jointly evaluate a manuscript, often through shared deliberations or the co-production of a consolidated review report. This approach aims to improve review quality by drawing on collective expertise and to mitigate reviewer fatigue by expanding and formally recognizing the pool of potential reviewers (Ezeike, 2024 ). It also functions as a valuable training mechanism for early-career researchers, who gain opportunities to review alongside experienced scholars. In addition, collaborative peer review makes visible those contributors who have long remained hidden within the system – such as PhD students who previously served as ghost reviewers when supervisors delegated manuscripts to them without formal acknowledgment (McDowell et al., 2019 ). Overall, this model positions peer review as a shared, collective responsibility within the scholarly community. With the rapid advancement of generative AI, technology-assisted peer review has emerged as a promising approach for improving the efficiency and effectiveness of journal peer review (Kousha & Thelwall, 2024 ). Some scholars caution that the use of AI may pose risks to the integrity of peer review, highlighting the need for explicit policies and guidelines to regulate reviewers’ behavior (Mollaki, 2024 ). Nevertheless, a growing body of research supports the use of AI-generated review assistance as a means to alleviate reviewers’ workload and enhance the overall quality of evaluations (Giray, 2024 ; Kankanhalli, 2024 ). Notably, in 2025, the International Conference on Learning Representations 1 introduced large language models to generate review suggestions and assist human reviewers, aiming to support and improve the quality of human review reports (Thakkar et al., 2025 ). Although open peer review, collaborative peer review, and AI-assisted peer review seek to redesign the structural configuration of journal evaluation, these reform trajectories share a fundamental limitation: they implicitly assume that structural adjustments can automatically remedy the dysfunctions produced in day-to-day reviewer-editor-author interactions. Yet these adjustments may introduce new dysfunctions. For example, while open peer review is intended to enhance transparency, it may instead reduce reviewer motivation and increase psychological pressure, as many reviewers prefer to remain anonymous (Nature Neuroscience, 1999 ). In this sense, modifying the structural format – whether through transparency, collaboration, or technological assistance – does not necessarily transform the interactional norms that sustain persistent inefficiencies. Consequently, such structural reforms risk becoming largely symbolic or ceremonial: promoted as modern, efficient, and effective, yet loosely coupled with the actual expectations and behaviors of researchers. Empirical evidence also suggests widespread concern: one study on researchers’ perceptions of open their identity found that more than half of participants held skeptical or resistant attitudes (Ross-Hellauer et al., 2017 ). In summary, if peer-review reforms aim to resolve rather than reproduce existing tensions, macro-level structural innovations must be complemented by attention to the micro-level incentives, power asymmetries, and role expectations embedded in everyday reviewing practices. Interactional reforms in peer review The interactional reforms in peer review rest on the premise that journals, editors, and authors each have specific responsibilities (Baker et al., 2017 ; DiDomenico et al., 2017 ; Haines et al., 2017 ). Building on this premise, the reforms further argue that quality and efficiency can be improved only when all parties actively assume these responsibilities and engage in the review process. Journals and editors evaluate whether a manuscript fits the journal’s scope, meets academic standards, and offers a meaningful contribution to existing knowledge (Haines et al., 2017 ). They also seek out highly qualified reviewers whose subject expertise and experience enable them to provide rigorous assessments that inform editorial decisions (Haines et al., 2017 ). Authors need training that helps them navigate the peer-review and publication process, including selecting appropriate journals, managing rejection, revising manuscripts, and responding constructively to reviewer comments. Such preparation strengthens their submissions and increases their chances of publication (Baker et al., 2017 ). For reviewers, peer review also brings several benefits. It allows them to build connections with journals, stay informed about developments in their field, strengthen their own research, and enhance their academic reputation; in some cases, they may even receive tangible rewards (Donovan et al., 2020 ; Kerig, 2021 ). Beyond their incentives, scholars often view peer reviewing as a moral obligation – an essential way to contribute to and sustain the academic community across contexts (DiDomenico et al., 2017 ; Treviño, 2008 ). This sense of duty appears not only in English-speaking academia but also in non-English settings, such as China (Horta & Wang, 2025 ). From this micro-interactional perspective, many problems in journal peer review stem from dysfunctions in its core roles and their responsibilities. Journals and editors may operate inefficiently, authors may fail to comply with established norms, and reviewers may provide low-quality assessments or neglect their duties. Addressing the crisis of peer review therefore appears to require motivating each role to perform efficiently, responsibly, and constructively. Following this logic, previous studies have proposed and tested a range of motivational strategies ( such as Chetty et al., 2014 ; Donovan et al., 2020 ; Squazzoni et al., 2013 ). However, this approach overlooks a central reality: journal peer review is not an isolated institution operating outside academia but one deeply embedded in, and profoundly shaped by the academic community. It is also influenced by broader transformations in scientific knowledge production, including the accelerating volume of publications (Thelwall & Sud, 2022 ; Vale, 2015 ), the increasing precarity of academic careers (Spina et al., 2022 ), and shifting identities of researchers and scientists (Godin & Schauz, 2016 ). A further limitation of this logic is its failure to recognize the fluidity and overlap of roles within peer review. The same individual may serve as a reviewer for one journal, an author for another, and occasionally an editor elsewhere, creating potential tensions within a single person’s motivations. Any motivational strategy that treats these roles as isolated simplifies the complex and interdependent nature of peer review. Journal peer review is not a linear process but a dynamic system shaped by multiple, shifting expectations. Clearly, this reductionist approach to peer review reform does not reflect the realities of contemporary scholarly publishing. An integrated institutional lens on peer review reform To address the limitations of structural and interactional reform perspectives, this study applied an institutional angle and tried to integrate these two dimensions mentioned above. Institutional theory conceptualizes institutions as configurations of formal structures, normative expectations, and routinized practices that jointly shape social action (Scott, 2013 ). From this standpoint, the formal rules and procedures of peer review (the structural dimension) cannot be separated from the everyday behaviors, role expectations, and interactional norms through which peer review is enacted (the interactional dimension). Institutional analysis therefore provides a coherent framework for understanding why changes in one dimension may or may not translate into changes in the other. Within this framework, peer review can be understood as both an organizational structure and an institutionalized norm in academic life. As Thornton et al. ( 2012 ) notes, institutions combine regulative, normative, and cultural-cognitive elements; similarly, prior research conceptualizes peer review as a taken-for-granted academic institution (Wang & Horta, 2025 ). Meyer and Rowan (1991) argue that institutions “involve normative obligations” yet enter social life as external facts that actors must accommodate (p. 42). Peer review has accordingly been naturalized as the disciplinary “gold standard” (Mayden, 2012 ) and as a professional obligation for researchers (Horta & Wang, 2025 ), shaping how academics understand their roles and responsibilities. From an institutional perspective, researchers attend not only to the formalized programs and procedures of peer review but also to the concrete interactions among authors, editors, and reviewers, because these two levels are deeply intertwined. Institutions “operate primarily by affecting persons’ prospective bets about the collective environment and collective activity” (Jepperson, 1991 , p. 147). Thus, researchers’ expectations for reform necessarily encompass both structural adjustments and interactional improvements, reflecting how they experience and interpret the functioning of the peer-review institution. Guided by this institutional perspective, the present study examines Chinese academics’ expectations for reform at both the structural and interactional levels. By analyzing how researchers envision changes to procedural rules as well as to situated interactional practices, the study illuminates the conditions under which peer-review reforms may enhance legitimacy, effectiveness, and alignment with the lived realities of academic work. Methodology This study adopted a qualitative research design to explore Chinese researchers’ expectations and suggestions for improving journal peer review. The data analyzed in this article form part of a larger research project that examines Chinese researchers’ attitudes toward, and participation in, peer review for both Chinese-language and international journals. Within this broader project, the study focused on seven elite research universities in China. Academics in these institutions are typically more deeply engaged in research activities, including publishing in national and international journals and serving as reviewers for both domestic and international outlets, making them particularly well positioned to reflect on the functioning and reform of peer review (Horta & Wang, 2025 ; Lu, 2022 ). Aligned with the aims of the larger project, participant selection was primarily based on their prior peer-review experience (more than two reviews). To construct a sample that met this criterion, the author systematically searched the official websites of the targeted universities to identify all eligible individuals and obtain their contact information. Using a purposive “total” sampling strategy, no additional eligibility requirements were imposed beyond the aforementioned criteria (Patton, 2014 ), resulting in 41 participants agreeing to take part in this study. Among the participants, there were 11 females and 30 males. Their disciplinary backgrounds ranged from the humanities and social sciences to science and engineering. Sixteen participants had reviewed exclusively for international journals, whereas the remaining seventeen had experience reviewing for both Chinese and international journals. Given that academic rank may influence researchers’ reviewing attitudes and behaviors (Wang et al., 2022 ), this study also collected participants’ academic rank information. The sample included 12 assistant professors, 16 associate professors, and 13 full professors, indicating a reasonable level of representativeness across academic ranks. Data were collected through one-on-one interviews conducted between October 2023 and August 2024. Prior to the interviews, each participant received an informed consent form via email, which outlined the overall aims and procedures of the research project. Using a semi-structured interview protocol, participants were asked about their experiences reviewing for international journals as well as their general attitudes toward journal peer review. Importantly, participants’ expectations and suggestions for improving peer review were also elicited, serving as the core analytical material for this study. With participants’ consent, all interviews – with the exception of two – were audio-recorded, each lasting approximately 60 minutes, and fully transcribed for subsequent analysis. For the two interviews that were not recorded, detailed notes were taken during and immediately after the interviews and were included in the analysis. To address the research questions, the analysis focused on three dimensions: (1) researchers’ expectations regarding improvements to the structural aspects of peer review; (2) their suggestions derived from micro-level reviewing experiences; and (3) areas of consensus and tension within these expectations and suggestions. The initial coding frame based on these dimensions was complemented by an inductive approach through which interview segments relevant to the predetermined codes were identified, compared, and refined. Member checking was employed to enhance within-sample triangulation and to strengthen the credibility of the interpretations. The following section presents the key findings emerging from this analytical process. Findings Shared expectations for structural reforms in peer review Four overarching themes emerged that capture Chinese academics’ shared expectations for both leveraging the strengths of peer review and reforming its procedural design: (1) strengthening feedback and procedural fairness, (2) emphasizing review quality and rigor, (3) enhancing the reuse of review reports, and (4) promoting responsible AI use. Taken together, these expectations reflect a broader concern with optimizing the macro-level functions of peer review, ensuring that the system not only evaluates manuscripts effectively but also supports knowledge circulation, accountability, and systemic efficiency. Strengthening feedback and procedural fairness Peer review is often described as a “black-box” process (Smith, 2006 ). Reviewers are invited by journals and editors to evaluate submitted manuscripts, and their assessments play a central role in editorial decision-making. Yet despite their essential contribution, reviewers are frequently excluded from subsequent stages of the process. From the reviewer’s perspective, T19 emphasized the importance of receiving follow-up feedback on how their comments were used and on the final decision regarding the manuscript, arguing that such transparency would signal respect for reviewers’ work and acknowledge their intellectual contribution. Once I submit a review, I receive no follow-up from the journal. I am not informed of the manuscript’s final decision or how my comments affected it. In practice, there is no feedback on the outcome or the use of my review, and the process ends once I submit my report. (T19-Male-Sociology-Associate professor) In addition to concerns about follow-up procedures, participants frequently highlighted the importance of fairness, particularly in relation to the role and conduct of editors. From the reviewer’s standpoint, they emphasized that editors should respect reviewers’ judgments rather than rely on personal preferences (T23). From the author’s perspective, they stressed that manuscripts should be evaluated by qualified experts and treated equitably, with reduced influence from institutional or reputational biases (T31). These expectations align with previous research showing that scholars increasingly call for improvements in diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility within peer review processes (Kohrs et al., 2026 ). If peer review is to serve as the core standard for publication, the process must be procedurally fair. Manuscripts should be evaluated by qualified experts, and editorial decisions should be grounded in reviewers’ judgments. Editors and reviewers need clearly defined roles and mutual respect to sustain a sound publication system. (T23-Male-Education-Professor) Regarding the peer review system, I believe editors should act more fairly and treat researchers equally. Decisions should not be influenced by whether an author comes from a well-known group or a prestigious team. (T31-Male-Computer science-Associate professor) Emphasizing review quality The second area that Chinese academics consistently emphasized is the improvement of review quality. Almost all participants in this study reported encountering extremely poor review comments, describing them as either excessively harsh or lacking substantive value. Prior studies have examined several effective approaches, such as developing review-quality instruments to guide reviewers in structuring their reports (Rooyen et al., 1999 ; Sizo et al., 2025 ) and enhancing transparency in the peer review process (Wicherts, 2016 ). In the present study, participants proposed an additional mechanism aimed at both monitoring review quality and safeguarding reviewers’ identities: the delayed release of all review comments: I think journals should either make review reports public, adopt open peer review, or implement fully double-blinded review. Posting all correspondence and records online would show who reviews diligently, who gives favors, and who is lenient. Authors’ responses would also reveal their competence and the quality of the manuscript. To protect reviewers, double-blind review or delayed release of reports and responses – e.g., after three years – could be used. (T31-Male-Computer science-Associate professor) Ideally, enhancing incentives and increasing stakeholder involvement have the potential to strengthen the quality and impartiality of journal peer review (Kadaifci et al., 2025 ). In practice, however, it is uncertain whether reviewers possess sufficient motivation to devote the substantial time and effort required for more rigorous evaluations. Participants’ calls for improved review quality and greater rigor further underscore a systemic weakness in the current peer review model: its procedural design lacks robust mechanisms to ensure, monitor, and enforce the quality of manuscript evaluation (Newton, 2010 ). Enhancing the reuse of review reports Reviewers’ comments are produced by peers within the same scholarly community. There are precedents in which a researcher’s commentary has been published as a standalone article in the same journal, demonstrating the dialogic potential of peer review 2 . However, due to the “black box” nature of the process, the academic value of reviewers’ reports is often underestimated or even overlooked (Ross-Hellauer, 2017 ). T41, an expert in library and information science, emphasized that review comments hold scholarly value not only for authors but also for the broader research community. She encouraged journals to increase the openness and reuse of review reports, enabling them to serve as resources for further analysis and knowledge development: Reviews from high-quality journals are often excellent, and we should find better ways to use them. Currently, they remain in a black box and are not public, yet they have clear academic value. One option is to publish the article together with the reviewers’ comments after publication, with reviewers’ consent. Readers can gain new insights, and such an approach could further scientific exchange. (T41-Female-Library and information science-Assistant professor) Considering the dialogue nature of peer review, T27, an associate professor in finance suggested extending the interaction between reviewers and authors after the manuscript is published. All of these proposals lead to uncover and amplify the scholarly value of peer review, thereby contributing to the maintenance and development of the academic community: To make the peer review process more valuable and constructive, one possibility is to facilitate a dialogue between reviewers and authors after a manuscript is published. Through subsequent academic activities, the review process can be extended as a reflective, even debate-like, exercise that focuses on the work rather than the individuals involved. (T27-Female-Finance-Associate professor) Promoting responsible use of AI in peer review Most participants in science and engineering expressed concerns about the low efficiency and limited effectiveness of the current peer review process. Although recent advances in generative AI have introduced new possibilities for assisting or even partially automating peer review (Checco et al., 2021 ), researchers in this study adopted a notably cautious stance toward such technologies. Seven participants acknowledged that AI could support journals and reviewers with routine tasks, such as identifying and matching suitable reviewers or summarizing the main content of a manuscript. However, none believed that AI could function as a qualified reviewer at the current stage because they felt it lacks the capacity to evaluate a paper’s novelty and intellectual contribution. As a result, AI-assisted peer review emerges as a shared imaginary among Chinese researchers and is viewed primarily as a tool for procedural support rather than a substitute for human scholarly judgment. AI can assist in the review process by, for example, automatically identifying low-quality or potentially plagiarized manuscripts. During peer review, AI could help summarize the main content of a manuscript in advance, allowing me to decide whether to take on the review. It can also help me grasp the key points quickly, saving time. In the future, AI might be able to evaluate a manuscript’s novelty, but at present this still requires human judgment. AI can only serve as an aid. (T38-Male-Computer science-Assistant professor) Peer review is inherently imperfect due to human limitations. Some basic tasks could be assisted by AI, which is impartial if programmed without subjective criteria, such as matching manuscripts with suitable reviewers. Assessing a manuscript’s novelty and contribution still requires human judgment. (T8-Female-Education-Associate professor) Chinese academics’ expectations for improving peer review structure focus on several shared areas, including transparency, fairness, review quality, academic value, and technology-assisted support. These expectations reflect a strong consensus on the legitimacy of peer review: although the process is not flawless, there is broad agreement that it can and should be improved (Mulligan et al., 2013 ). A key challenge, however, lies in determining who is responsible for implementing these improvements and whether they possess sufficient incentives to do so. The following section examines the tensions embedded in researchers’ micro-level expectations of peer review, drawing on their interactions and experiences. This analysis highlights the complexity of aligning the interests of different stakeholders and underscores the practical difficulties involved in enacting meaningful reforms within the peer review system. Tensions in interaction-based expectations for peer review Ambiguous responsibility boundaries between reviewers and editors As central actors in the peer review process, participants suggested that reviewers could take on additional responsibilities, including checking the validity and credibility of submitted manuscripts. T31, an associate professor in computer science, argued strongly from the author’s view that journals should require reviewers to verify the code included in submissions in order to prevent research misconduct and potential plagiarism. In our field of computer science, it is crucial to validate experiments. Some authors claim excellent experimental results that cannot withstand verification. Reviewers should require that the authors make their code publicly available and reproducible so that the results can be independently replicated. I believe reviewers should be required to run the code on a virtual server to verify the experimental outcomes themselves. (T31-Male-Computer science-Associate professor) To sustain a responsible peer review process, reviewers emphasized that journals should assume a greater share of the initial checking and screening tasks in order to reduce reviewers’ workload. These tasks include conducting plagiarism checks (T36), requiring authors to provide necessary publication records to prevent minor revisions of previously published work (T36), and offering clearer and more detailed reviewer guidelines (T18). Reviewers expected to have a well-defined understanding of their responsibilities and the standards they are expected to meet. In short, they argued that “the scholarly evaluation should be carried out by reviewers, whereas the remaining checks should be handled by the journal (T2)”. Representing the reviewers’ standpoint, T21 articulated her expectation for a more responsible and proactive editorial team: I certainly expect a stricter and more responsible editorial team. First, editors need to have a clear positioning for their journal, defining the level of innovation and quality they require. They typically conduct an initial screening, and for top journals, less than 10% of submissions advance to the next stage. (T21-Female-Environmental science-Associate professor) In addition to reviewers’ expectations, authors also expressed a strong desire for editors to play a more active role in ensuring the quality of peer review. They expected editors to carefully examine reviewers’ comments to identify cases of irresponsible reviewing or potential bias, which in turn would help ensure that their own manuscripts are evaluated more fairly. After reviewers complete their reports, editors still need to carefully consider the comments rather than simply forwarding them. Editors should provide their own assessment, which can reassure authors. Even though reviewers write extensively, the editors are aware of the key points and exercise judgment. (T28-Female-Psychology- Assistant professor) This juxtaposition highlights a fundamental tension embedded in the peer review process. On the one hand, reviewers seek clearer guidance, more frequent feedback, and better alignment between manuscripts and their areas of expertise, reflecting their expectations for adequate institutional support in fulfilling the reviewing task (Schroter et al., 2018 ). On the other hand, journals expect reviewers to act responsibly, exercise sound judgment, and diligently fulfill their evaluative duties, treating peer review as a normative professional obligation (COPE, 2017). These dual expectations generate a form of reciprocal pressure rooted in ambiguously defined responsibilities: while journals rely on reviewers’ voluntary yet conscientious labor, reviewers operate within institutional arrangements that offer limited clarification, support, or recognition. As a result, journals and reviewers remain interdependent but not fully aligned, producing persistent tensions between normative expectations and practical reviewing conditions. Conflicting demands among journals, authors, and reviewers The second tension concerns the conflicting demands among journals, authors, and reviewers. Journals seek to shorten the publication timeline in order to remain competitive amid rising submission volumes and increasing pressure from publishers. However, reviewers frequently report that this institutional pressure is being shifted onto them. The compressed review deadlines imposed by journals leave reviewers feeling overwhelmed, thereby intensifying their workload and straining their capacity to conduct thorough evaluations: Some professors review thirty to forty manuscripts in a single month. Reviewing almost every day and writing detailed comments can be exhausting. Currently, many journals impose very strict deadlines to shorten publication times, often requiring reviews to be completed in ten days or two weeks. This shifts significant pressure onto reviewers, which I consider disrespectful. Ideally, these practices could be revised, but in reality it is difficult due to the intense competition among journals. (T30-Male-Materials science-Professor) In this situation, reviewers hope for longer and more flexible review timelines so that they can properly fulfill their responsibilities. However, this expectation directly conflicts with journals’ demands to accelerate the publication process, creating a complex tension that complicates efforts to improve peer review. Reviewers can provide careful evaluations if they have sufficient time. However, journals and editors often impose strict deadlines and constantly urge reviewers to complete their assessments. Therefore, it would be preferable to allow reviewers more time. (T34-Male-Electrical and electronic engineering-Professor) For authors, expectations are also dual. On the one hand, they hope journals will process and publish their manuscripts as quickly as possible. On the other hand, they expect reviewers to conduct thorough and responsible evaluations and to provide meaningful, constructive feedback. In other words, authors place strong emphasis on both the speed and the quality of review. Consequently, they expect reviewers’ behavior to be monitored and appropriately regulated to ensure that their manuscripts are evaluated fairly and professionally: I think the peer review system should include a mechanism for evaluating reviewers, such as a scoring system for review quality or a way for authors to provide feedback on reviewers’ comments. I feel the current review process is somewhat harsh and taxing. While some requests are reasonable, increasingly there are excessive and overly detailed demands, which many in our field complain about. (T3-Female-Biology-Associate professor) Moreover, from the authors’ perspective, participants highlighted the unequal power relationship between authors and reviewers. In order to secure publication, authors often felt compelled to compromise even when they disagreed with reviewers’ comments. Consequently, they expressed a desire to rebalance this power dynamic within the peer review system: Sometimes reviewers raise issues without fully understanding the manuscript, just to complete the review. As an author, I must address their comments or risk being seen as uncooperative. In one case, I disagreed with a minor suggestion, but the reviewer insisted, and I ultimately had to compromise. This creates an awkward situation where authors must follow reviewers’ opinions even if they disagree. (T13-Female-Education-Assistant professor) However, given the inherent roles and functions of editors, reviewers, and authors in the review process, it is difficult to fundamentally shift the entrenched power relations between reviewers and reviewees (Lipworth & Kerridge, 2011 ). This structural constraint further contributes to the complexity of improving the peer review system. Editors, reviewers, and authors each have their own demands, but these demands often pull against one another or even come into direct conflict (Lipworth & Kerridge, 2011 ). The root of this tension lies in the objective differences in their roles (or positions) within the peer review process, as well as the changing external research environment in which the system operates (Horta & Wang, 2025 ). Factors such as the surge in publication volume, increasing pressure on researchers to publish, and the extension of research time – which consequently forces scholars to sacrifice the time that might otherwise be devoted to reviewing – create external pressures that are transferred onto different actors within the system. As a result, when each group proposes suggestions for improving peer review from its own standpoint, significant tensions and even mutual accusations tend to emerge. Divergent standards for reviewing responsibilities Many previous studies have found a broad consensus among researchers that participating in peer review is part of their professional responsibility (Donovan et al., 2020 ; Horta & Wang, 2025 ; Nobarany et al., 2016 ). However, this study reveals that Chinese reviewers hold divergent views regarding the standards of such responsibility, that is, how many manuscripts can be considered “enough” for a reviewer to evaluate. One view is that a reviewer’s workload should correspond to their own scholarly output. According to this perspective, journals should assign review tasks based on potential reviewers’ publication records, with researchers who publish more frequently expected to take on a larger share of reviewing work. Following the same reciprocal logic, three participants argued that for each paper a researcher publishes, he or she should review at least three manuscripts in return, thereby contributing proportionally to the academic community. In the past, I might publish a dozen papers as the corresponding author each year. When we submit our own manuscripts, it is normal to review other submissions from the journal. However, for those who rarely publish, they are still assigned many manuscripts to review even though they do not contribute much themselves. This creates a sense of unfairness. (T30-Male-Materials science-Professor ) The other view is that “enough is enough”, meaning that standards of reviewing responsibility should be based on a reviewer’s actual contribution. Once reviewers have fulfilled what they consider a reasonable amount of reviewing or when they lack sufficient time, they should have the right to decline review invitations. To make such a standard feasible, T16 suggested that journals and even the broader academic community establish a shared reviewer record. This system would allow review tasks to be allocated more appropriately, rather than repeatedly relying on the same individuals. I think journals should maintain a reviewer credit record, tracking how many reviews each person completes and declines. No one should receive too many review invitations. Reviewers should only handle a few manuscripts when they have the capacity, and journals should allocate review assignments more reasonably. (T16-Male-Earth and space science-Associate professor) These divergent views are not a simple value opposition but the result of a complex interplay among institutional arrangements, resource constraints, academic culture, and role expectations. In Chinese academic systems, publication quantity and journal prestige remain central criteria for evaluation and promotion (Huang et al., 2021 ). This structure allows highly productive scholars to gain greater academic returns, thereby reinforcing the legitimacy of the “output-based contribution” view. The underlying moral logic is that those who benefit more from the system should give more back to the academic community. In contrast, when peer-review labor is not formally recognized or rewarded in evaluation systems, scholars tend to allocate their limited time to activities that bring direct career benefits (Horta & Jung, 2024 ), which strengthens the appeal of the “enough is enough” position. Addressing these tensions does not lie in choosing one side over the other but in designing institutional mechanisms that balance reciprocal fairness with respect for individual time constraints and actual capacity. Contradictions in reward and sanction practices To enhance reviewers’ motivation, Chinese researchers expressed differing views on the forms and effectiveness of rewards. One perspective emphasized the importance of material incentives. Participants noted that the voluntary nature of peer review often results in reviewers’ contributions being undervalued. Therefore, they suggested that journals should encourage participation by providing appropriate financial compensation: Peer review is unpaid and entirely voluntary. From the editor’s perspective, it is becoming increasingly difficult to find suitable reviewers, especially when they are asked to complete heavy workloads on short notice for no compensation. From the reviewer’s perspective, the work is essentially fueled by goodwill. If the system is to improve, journals could consider offering some form of material compensation, which might motivate more researchers to participate, given the significant time involved. Alternatives such as discounts on publication fees or other forms of support could also encourage broader engagement in the review process. (T25-Female-Psychology-Associate professor) However, not all participants agreed with this perspective. Some believed that the voluntary nature of peer review is preferable, as it fosters mutual support within the academic community. Additionally, they expressed concern that financial incentives from journals might impose stricter or more burdensome obligations on reviewers. At the same time, participants suggested that journals could encourage engagement in peer review through reputational rewards, such as increasing the visibility of reviewers’ contributions: I don’t think most people care much about the money. Payment might make reviewers more responsive, but once you accept it, the journal is in a position to demand that you meet strict deadlines, which makes me hesitate. That’s why I feel peer review works better as a voluntary, community-based practice. It’s a reciprocal process in which scholars contribute their time to support one another within the academic community. (T25-Male-Systems and control engineering-Professor) I think reputational incentives could be made more visible. Many journals already acknowledge strong review work or issue certificates, but this could be made more systematic. A more structured approach might help motivate more reviewers. (T20-Male-Environmental science-Assistant professor) Regarding sanctions for unethical behavior, some participants argued that, from the authors’ perspective, both editors and reviewers should be held strictly accountable: Some associate editors may manipulate the peer-review process, and this calls for institutional safeguards. If someone has a history of manipulating reviews or other serious misconduct, this record should be permanently kept and made known, so that they are excluded from all review systems in the future. (T31-Male-Computer science-Associate professor) In contrast, from the reviewers’ perspective, the emphasis was on self-discipline in fulfilling their own responsibilities. Consequently, they resisted strict punitive measures and emphasized the importance of maintaining autonomy in participating in academic activities. One problem now is that reviewers often return their reports very slowly, which makes the review cycle extremely long. However, it is not very feasible to enforce strict rules in this situation. In the end, it still relies on reviewers’ self-discipline and their willingness to regard peer review as part of their responsibility as researchers. (T12-Female-Political geography-Assistant professor) This finding highlights a pronounced divergence between authors and reviewers regarding incentives and sanctions in peer review. Such divergence can even be observed within the same group, as seen in reviewers’ differing views on which types of rewards are effective. The tension reflects role-based expectations in the peer review process, with authors viewing reviewing as a reciprocal obligation, while reviewers prefer to rely on intrinsic motivation with minimal external constraints. These insights suggest that improving peer review requires carefully balancing the expectations of different roles to maintain both efficiency and engagement. Discussion and conclusion This paper examines Chinese researchers’ expectations for improving peer review by integrating both macro-structural and micro-interactional perspectives. At the structural level, four major themes emerged: strengthening feedback and procedural fairness, emphasizing review quality, enhancing the reuse of review reports and promoting responsible use of AI. These findings align with prior survey studies showing that researchers commonly expect peer review to become more efficient and produce higher-quality evaluations (Adam, 2025 ; Malički & Mehmani, 2024 ). They further suggest a shared understanding that peer review remains an indispensable institution for sustaining the academic community and safeguarding knowledge production (Mulligan et al., 2013 ). Consequently, researchers hoped to refine the existing system and uncover greater scholarly value within it. With the rapid advancement of AI, technological tools offer promising avenues for improving the efficiency of peer review. However, consistent with earlier research, Chinese researchers emphasized that AI should serve only in an assistive capacity rather than replace human reviewers entirely (Bauchner & Rivara, 2024 ). This indicates that if journals intend to integrate AI into the review process, they must conduct rigorous assessments of its effectiveness and provide clear explanations to both authors and reviewers regarding its role and limitations to increase their acceptance of it. Such efforts are essential to maintaining trust and ensuring that technological innovations enhance, rather than undermine, the integrity of peer review. At the interactional level, this study shows that editors, authors, and reviewers hold distinct role-based expectations that generate tensions in the peer review process. Unclear responsibility boundaries lead reviewers and editors to expect each other to assume more checking work. Journals aim to accelerate publication, authors seek both speed and high-quality feedback, while reviewers want sufficient time for careful evaluation. Reviewers also differ in how they assess their responsibilities: some rely on reciprocal logic tied to publication output, while others emphasize voluntary contribution. Divergent expectations also appear regarding rewards and sanctions. Some reviewers support financial incentives, whereas others fear such rewards may compromise autonomy and therefore prefer reputational forms of recognition. These differences reflect the structurally distinct positions that each role occupies within peer review, which shape their evaluations of what improvement should mean (Lipworth & Kerridge, 2011 ). These findings suggest that peer review reform requires clarifying whose expectations are prioritized and balancing the needs of different roles to ensure a more legitimate and workable system. Notably, these tensions are directly influenced and amplified by the broader scientific environment outside of peer review. Unlike the original purpose of peer review, which was to serve a small scientific community (Moxham & Fyfe, 2018 ), contemporary science faces a rapidly growing and increasingly professionalized population of researchers engaged in intense global competition (Fortunato et al., 2018 ). At the same time, the volume of academic publications has surged (El Shamieh & Chebly, 2024 ). Peer review, however, remains highly institutionalized and largely voluntary, and the labor of reviewers is rarely formally recognized or rewarded within the academic system, nor does it directly contribute to career advancement (Horta & Jung, 2024 ; Seghier, 2024 ). As a result, reviewers in central positions often define their reviewing responsibilities flexibly, sometimes partially or entirely opting out of this demanding and unrewarded activity. Consequently, strategies for improving peer review carry a dual implication: first, to ensure its function meets the expectations of different roles as much as possible; and second, to better align peer review with the evolving practices of modern science and knowledge production. This study contributes to the development of peer review reform strategies by incorporating researchers’ perspectives. Researchers are both participants in and beneficiaries of the peer review process, yet their attitudes and expectations regarding evolving journal peer review have received limited attention in previous studies. Building on this contribution, incorporating researchers’ expectations into the reconsideration of peer review reform is analytically and practically meaningful for at least two reasons. First, researchers are not passive recipients of peer review arrangements but active institutional actors embedded in reviewing practices. As authors, reviewers, and sometimes editors, they occupy multiple roles and accumulate experiential knowledge about how peer review actually operates in practice. Their expectations therefore reflect not only individual preferences but also situated judgments formed through repeated engagement with institutional routines. Attending to these perspectives allows reform debates to move beyond abstract design principles and to engage with the practical wisdom and constraints encountered by those who enact peer review on a daily basis. Second, incorporating researchers’ voices provides an important corrective to reform agendas that are often initiated and framed by journals, publishers, or policy actors. While such initiatives tend to emphasize efficiency, transparency, or innovation, the effectiveness of peer review reforms ultimately depends on researchers’ acceptance, compliance, and everyday enactment. Peer review reforms are not merely organizational tools for journals; they are institutional interventions that directly shape researchers’ workloads, professional risks, and evaluative experiences. Bringing researchers’ expectations into the reform process thus helps to calibrate reform strategies, aligning institutional ambitions with the realities of academic practice. The findings of this study underscore the value of such calibration. Researchers expressed cautious and ambivalent attitudes toward widely promoted reforms such as open peer review and AI-assisted peer review, reflecting concerns about vulnerability, workload, and unintended consequences. Similarly, views diverged regarding reward mechanisms for peer review and sanctions for misconduct, suggesting that incentive-based reforms may generate new tensions rather than straightforward improvements. At the same time, there was broad consensus around the need for higher-quality, more effective, and more efficient peer review. Together, these patterns caution against overly radical or one-dimensional reform approaches – whether in procedural form or incentive design – and highlight the importance of grounding peer review reform in researchers’ shared expectations as well as their articulated concerns. Future research could build on findings of this study by empirically evaluating the efficiency and effectiveness of specific peer review reform strategies. Moreover, this study focused exclusively on Chinese researchers’ expectations. 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Scientometrics 125(2):1033–1051. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-020-03488-4 Yu H, Liang Y, Xie Y (2024) Can peer review accolade awards motivate reviewers? A large-scale quasi-natural experiment. Humanit Social Sci Commun 11(1):1557. https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-024-04088-w Footnotes The International Conference on Learning Representations (ICLR) is among the leading conferences in computer science. It is globally recognized for showcasing and publishing state-of-the-art research in deep learning, along with its key applications in areas such as computer vision, natural language understanding, gaming, robotics, and more. For example, in 1995, Sutton and Staw published “What Theory Is Not” in Administrative Science Quarterly, followed by DiMaggio’s ( 1995 ) “Comments on ‘What Theory Is Not’” in the same issue. Although there is no direct evidence that DiMaggio served as a reviewer for Sutton and Staw’s manuscript, this exchange illustrates a broader point: reviewer comments can function not only as a mechanism of quality assurance, but also as a form of intellectual dialogue between authors and reviewers. Additional Declarations The authors declare no competing interests. Cite Share Download PDF Status: Posted Version 1 posted You are reading this latest preprint version Research Square lets you share your work early, gain feedback from the community, and start making changes to your manuscript prior to peer review in a journal. As a division of Research Square Company, we’re committed to making research communication faster, fairer, and more useful. We do this by developing innovative software and high quality services for the global research community. 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Also discoverable on Platform About Our Team In Review Editorial Policies Advisory Board Help Center Resources Author Services Accessibility API Access RSS feed Manage Cookie Preferences © Research Square 2026 | ISSN 2693-5015 (online) Privacy Policy Terms of Service Do Not Sell My Personal Information {"props":{"pageProps":{"initialData":{"identity":"rs-8409119","acceptedTermsAndConditions":true,"allowDirectSubmit":true,"archivedVersions":[],"articleType":"Research Article","associatedPublications":[],"authors":[{"id":563250532,"identity":"99df0fb1-44da-4ccf-83cb-60ab36337bfe","order_by":0,"name":"Pengjuan Wang","email":"data:image/png;base64,iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEUgAAAZAAAAAyAQMAAABI0h/eAAAABlBMVEX///8AAABVwtN+AAAACXBIWXMAAA7EAAAOxAGVKw4bAAAA5UlEQVRIiWNgGAWjYLACCQYbODtBgoGBjbGBsJY0mAZitTAwHCZBizl77+EXlm3n5fmlew8++PmDIU9yRgLbwxl4tFj2nEuzkGy7bThzzrlkw54EhmJpiQR2ww14tBjcyDEzkNx2OwHEkAY6LHGeRAKb5AN8Wu6/AWk5B9Ji/ps4LTd4jB9IbjsAtoUZpGU2SAs+h1n25JgxSP5LNpw5I8dYsidNInFmz8M2SXzeN2c/Y/xZ4oydPL9EjuGHHzY2iTOOJx+T7MHnMGAsSEsg+CAmgYgEamH++AGvklEwCkbBKBjxAAA/80ul6BrP5gAAAABJRU5ErkJggg==","orcid":"","institution":"University of Hong Kong","correspondingAuthor":true,"prefix":"","firstName":"Pengjuan","middleName":"","lastName":"Wang","suffix":""}],"badges":[],"createdAt":"2025-12-20 03:16:43","currentVersionCode":1,"declarations":{"humanSubjects":false,"vertebrateSubjects":false,"conflictsOfInterestStatement":false,"humanSubjectEthicalGuidelines":false,"humanSubjectConsent":false,"humanSubjectClinicalTrial":false,"humanSubjectCaseReport":false,"vertebrateSubjectEthicalGuidelines":false},"doi":"10.21203/rs.3.rs-8409119/v1","doiUrl":"https://doi.org/10.21203/rs.3.rs-8409119/v1","draftVersion":[],"editorialEvents":[],"editorialNote":"","failedWorkflow":false,"files":[{"id":98859736,"identity":"e9c126c1-6e89-4518-ac91-3b3a3fb18e0e","added_by":"auto","created_at":"2025-12-23 08:40:56","extension":"docx","order_by":0,"title":"","display":"","copyAsset":false,"role":"acdc-reference","size":68895,"visible":true,"origin":"","legend":"","description":"","filename":"Blindedmanuscript..docx","url":"https://assets-eu.researchsquare.com/files/rs-8409119/v1/6ab846ee4d2fca519d39c8dc.docx"},{"id":98859737,"identity":"2f7fddf4-7608-4600-b5fe-b966a1b9f278","added_by":"auto","created_at":"2025-12-23 08:40:56","extension":"json","order_by":1,"title":"","display":"","copyAsset":false,"role":"acdc-reference","size":342,"visible":true,"origin":"","legend":"","description":"","filename":"rs8409119.json","url":"https://assets-eu.researchsquare.com/files/rs-8409119/v1/92308c2566282fb6412fa236.json"},{"id":99308575,"identity":"c9759eb5-7c9b-41ae-9af6-747018cd73f3","added_by":"auto","created_at":"2025-12-31 16:08:47","extension":"xml","order_by":2,"title":"","display":"","copyAsset":false,"role":"acdc-reference","size":151700,"visible":true,"origin":"","legend":"","description":"","filename":"rs84091190enriched.xml","url":"https://assets-eu.researchsquare.com/files/rs-8409119/v1/2808cbf4001e2de24c034b10.xml"},{"id":98859740,"identity":"fe53778f-4087-4422-a3ea-4100e74016c6","added_by":"auto","created_at":"2025-12-23 08:40:56","extension":"xml","order_by":3,"title":"","display":"","copyAsset":false,"role":"acdc-reference","size":147454,"visible":true,"origin":"","legend":"","description":"","filename":"rs84091190structuring.xml","url":"https://assets-eu.researchsquare.com/files/rs-8409119/v1/609798a2e94a810aedefc9c2.xml"},{"id":98859738,"identity":"6e0d9863-65aa-4a7c-8df9-c6a334ed715b","added_by":"auto","created_at":"2025-12-23 08:40:56","extension":"html","order_by":4,"title":"","display":"","copyAsset":false,"role":"acdc-reference","size":160239,"visible":true,"origin":"","legend":"","description":"","filename":"earlyproof.html","url":"https://assets-eu.researchsquare.com/files/rs-8409119/v1/86fa85850eee656de154d4b3.html"},{"id":99322554,"identity":"dab7ba66-22fb-47a9-aba7-523efc271990","added_by":"auto","created_at":"2025-12-31 16:43:48","extension":"pdf","order_by":0,"title":"","display":"","copyAsset":false,"role":"manuscript-pdf","size":640203,"visible":true,"origin":"","legend":"","description":"","filename":"manuscript.pdf","url":"https://assets-eu.researchsquare.com/files/rs-8409119/v1/71e1c87a-4348-4eba-8ed8-a39a83b7d6c8.pdf"}],"financialInterests":"The authors declare no competing interests.","formattedTitle":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eBeyond structural fixes: Expectations of Chinese academics for structural and interactional reform in peer review\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","fulltext":[{"header":"Introduction","content":"\u003cp\u003ePeer review is the core mechanism of academic publishing and has long been regarded as the \u0026ldquo;gold standard\u0026rdquo; of knowledge production within the academic community (Mayden, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR36\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2012\u003c/span\u003e). Despite its well-established status, the system remains subject to persistent critique regarding its efficiency, effectiveness, and susceptibility to various forms of bias (Heesen \u0026amp; Bright, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR21\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2021\u003c/span\u003e; Horta \u0026amp; Jung, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR23\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2024\u003c/span\u003e; Tennant \u0026amp; Ross-Hellauer, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR59\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2020\u003c/span\u003e). In response to the perceived \u0026ldquo;crisis\u0026rdquo; of journal peer review, publishers and researchers have proposed a wide range of reform strategies. These include promoting open or collaborative peer review and other innovative review models (Ghildiyal, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR17\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2025\u003c/span\u003e; Henriquez, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR22\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2023\u003c/span\u003e; Kwon et al., \u003cspan citationid=\"CR32\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2018\u003c/span\u003e); incorporating AI and other technological tools to enhance review quality and timeliness (Kousha \u0026amp; Thelwall, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR31\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2024\u003c/span\u003e; Overcash, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR45\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2025\u003c/span\u003e); offering professional training programs for reviewers (Buser et al., \u003cspan citationid=\"CR5\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2023\u003c/span\u003e); and providing more explicit forms of recognition and incentives to sustain reviewer participation (Ellwanger \u0026amp; Chies, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR13\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2020\u003c/span\u003e; Gasparyan et al., \u003cspan citationid=\"CR16\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2015\u003c/span\u003e; Yu et al., \u003cspan citationid=\"CR69\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2024\u003c/span\u003e) and so on.\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eWhile these initiatives have generated valuable insights, most of them focus either on structural and procedural modifications to the peer-review system \u0026ndash; such as the development of new peer-review models \u0026ndash; or on interactional interventions aiming at shaping the role responsibilities of authors, reviewers, and editors, such as strengthening reviewers\u0026rsquo; motivation. However, there remains a lack of an integrative framework that brings these two perspectives together, and the voices of researchers, as the core participants, have largely been overlooked (Tennant \u0026amp; Ross-Hellauer, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR59\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2020\u003c/span\u003e). To address this gap, this study adopts an institutional perspective and conceptualizes journal peer review as an academic institution. It examines the expectations and suggestions put forward by Chinese academics who participate in peer review both as reviewers and as authors. This study raised two research questions:\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003e \u003cstrong\u003eRQ1\u003c/strong\u003e \u003cp\u003eHow do Chinese academics perceive and expect improvements in the structural aspects of journal peer review?\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003e \u003cstrong\u003eRQ2\u003c/strong\u003e \u003cp\u003eHow do Chinese academics perceive and expect improvements in the interactional practices of journal peer review?\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eBy foregrounding practitioners\u0026rsquo; experiences and voices, this study aims to shed light on the institutional norms and interactional contradictions that shape peer-review practices so as to reflect the feasibility of proposed reform measures. Such insights have the potential to inform more coherent and sustainable reforms of the journal peer-review system.\u003c/p\u003e"},{"header":"Literature review","content":"\u003cp\u003eStructural reforms in peer review\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eThe structural reforms in peer review are grounded in the assumption that the major problems of journal peer review stem from its traditional forms and institutional arrangements, which are increasingly misaligned with the rapid expansion of scientific research and the surging volume of research publications (Horta \u0026amp; Jung, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR23\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2024\u003c/span\u003e). From this perspective, enhancing the efficiency and effectiveness of peer review requires diversifying its organizational models and procedural formats. Typical reforms developed under this logic include open peer review, collaborative peer review, and AI-assisted peer review.\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eOpen peer review aims to align peer-review practices more closely with the principles of Open Science (Ross-Hellauer, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR49\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2017\u003c/span\u003e). Despite the absence of a clear, standardized, and widely shared definition (Ross-Hellauer, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR49\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2017\u003c/span\u003e), open peer review initiatives generally seek to increase transparency in what has traditionally been a \u0026ldquo;black-box\u0026rdquo; process. This is achieved through practices such as removing anonymity for authors and/or reviewers, publishing reviewer reports, enabling wider community participation in the review process, and facilitating direct reciprocal communication between reviewers, or between reviewers and authors (Wolfram et al., \u003cspan citationid=\"CR68\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2020\u003c/span\u003e). In 2025, for example, Nature announced that all newly accepted manuscripts would be published together with reviewer reports and author responses, representing a significant step toward open peer review (Nature, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR41\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2025\u003c/span\u003e).\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eCollaborative peer review refers to a model in which multiple reviewers are invited to jointly evaluate a manuscript, often through shared deliberations or the co-production of a consolidated review report. This approach aims to improve review quality by drawing on collective expertise and to mitigate reviewer fatigue by expanding and formally recognizing the pool of potential reviewers (Ezeike, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR14\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2024\u003c/span\u003e). It also functions as a valuable training mechanism for early-career researchers, who gain opportunities to review alongside experienced scholars. In addition, collaborative peer review makes visible those contributors who have long remained hidden within the system \u0026ndash; such as PhD students who previously served as ghost reviewers when supervisors delegated manuscripts to them without formal acknowledgment (McDowell et al., \u003cspan citationid=\"CR37\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2019\u003c/span\u003e). Overall, this model positions peer review as a shared, collective responsibility within the scholarly community.\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eWith the rapid advancement of generative AI, technology-assisted peer review has emerged as a promising approach for improving the efficiency and effectiveness of journal peer review (Kousha \u0026amp; Thelwall, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR31\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2024\u003c/span\u003e). Some scholars caution that the use of AI may pose risks to the integrity of peer review, highlighting the need for explicit policies and guidelines to regulate reviewers\u0026rsquo; behavior (Mollaki, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR38\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2024\u003c/span\u003e). Nevertheless, a growing body of research supports the use of AI-generated review assistance as a means to alleviate reviewers\u0026rsquo; workload and enhance the overall quality of evaluations (Giray, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR18\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2024\u003c/span\u003e; Kankanhalli, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR28\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2024\u003c/span\u003e). Notably, in 2025, the International Conference on Learning Representations\u003csup\u003e1\u003c/sup\u003e introduced large language models to generate review suggestions and assist human reviewers, aiming to support and improve the quality of human review reports (Thakkar et al., \u003cspan citationid=\"CR60\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2025\u003c/span\u003e).\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eAlthough open peer review, collaborative peer review, and AI-assisted peer review seek to redesign the structural configuration of journal evaluation, these reform trajectories share a fundamental limitation: they implicitly assume that structural adjustments can automatically remedy the dysfunctions produced in day-to-day reviewer-editor-author interactions. Yet these adjustments may introduce new dysfunctions. For example, while open peer review is intended to enhance transparency, it may instead reduce reviewer motivation and increase psychological pressure, as many reviewers prefer to remain anonymous (Nature Neuroscience, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR42\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e1999\u003c/span\u003e). In this sense, modifying the structural format \u0026ndash; whether through transparency, collaboration, or technological assistance \u0026ndash; does not necessarily transform the interactional norms that sustain persistent inefficiencies.\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eConsequently, such structural reforms risk becoming largely symbolic or ceremonial: promoted as modern, efficient, and effective, yet loosely coupled with the actual expectations and behaviors of researchers. Empirical evidence also suggests widespread concern: one study on researchers\u0026rsquo; perceptions of open their identity found that more than half of participants held skeptical or resistant attitudes (Ross-Hellauer et al., \u003cspan citationid=\"CR50\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2017\u003c/span\u003e). In summary, if peer-review reforms aim to resolve rather than reproduce existing tensions, macro-level structural innovations must be complemented by attention to the micro-level incentives, power asymmetries, and role expectations embedded in everyday reviewing practices.\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eInteractional reforms in peer review\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eThe interactional reforms in peer review rest on the premise that journals, editors, and authors each have specific responsibilities (Baker et al., \u003cspan citationid=\"CR3\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2017\u003c/span\u003e; DiDomenico et al., \u003cspan citationid=\"CR9\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2017\u003c/span\u003e; Haines et al., \u003cspan citationid=\"CR20\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2017\u003c/span\u003e). Building on this premise, the reforms further argue that quality and efficiency can be improved only when all parties actively assume these responsibilities and engage in the review process. Journals and editors evaluate whether a manuscript fits the journal\u0026rsquo;s scope, meets academic standards, and offers a meaningful contribution to existing knowledge (Haines et al., \u003cspan citationid=\"CR20\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2017\u003c/span\u003e). They also seek out highly qualified reviewers whose subject expertise and experience enable them to provide rigorous assessments that inform editorial decisions (Haines et al., \u003cspan citationid=\"CR20\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2017\u003c/span\u003e). Authors need training that helps them navigate the peer-review and publication process, including selecting appropriate journals, managing rejection, revising manuscripts, and responding constructively to reviewer comments. Such preparation strengthens their submissions and increases their chances of publication (Baker et al., \u003cspan citationid=\"CR3\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2017\u003c/span\u003e). For reviewers, peer review also brings several benefits. It allows them to build connections with journals, stay informed about developments in their field, strengthen their own research, and enhance their academic reputation; in some cases, they may even receive tangible rewards (Donovan et al., \u003cspan citationid=\"CR11\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2020\u003c/span\u003e; Kerig, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR29\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2021\u003c/span\u003e). Beyond their incentives, scholars often view peer reviewing as a moral obligation \u0026ndash; an essential way to contribute to and sustain the academic community across contexts (DiDomenico et al., \u003cspan citationid=\"CR9\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2017\u003c/span\u003e; Trevi\u0026ntilde;o, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR63\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2008\u003c/span\u003e). This sense of duty appears not only in English-speaking academia but also in non-English settings, such as China (Horta \u0026amp; Wang, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR24\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2025\u003c/span\u003e).\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eFrom this micro-interactional perspective, many problems in journal peer review stem from dysfunctions in its core roles and their responsibilities. Journals and editors may operate inefficiently, authors may fail to comply with established norms, and reviewers may provide low-quality assessments or neglect their duties. Addressing the crisis of peer review therefore appears to require motivating each role to perform efficiently, responsibly, and constructively. Following this logic, previous studies have proposed and tested a range of motivational strategies ( such as Chetty et al., \u003cspan citationid=\"CR7\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2014\u003c/span\u003e; Donovan et al., \u003cspan citationid=\"CR11\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2020\u003c/span\u003e; Squazzoni et al., \u003cspan citationid=\"CR57\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2013\u003c/span\u003e). However, this approach overlooks a central reality: journal peer review is not an isolated institution operating outside academia but one deeply embedded in, and profoundly shaped by the academic community. It is also influenced by broader transformations in scientific knowledge production, including the accelerating volume of publications (Thelwall \u0026amp; Sud, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR61\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2022\u003c/span\u003e; Vale, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR64\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2015\u003c/span\u003e), the increasing precarity of academic careers (Spina et al., \u003cspan citationid=\"CR56\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2022\u003c/span\u003e), and shifting identities of researchers and scientists (Godin \u0026amp; Schauz, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR19\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2016\u003c/span\u003e).\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eA further limitation of this logic is its failure to recognize the fluidity and overlap of roles within peer review. The same individual may serve as a reviewer for one journal, an author for another, and occasionally an editor elsewhere, creating potential tensions within a single person\u0026rsquo;s motivations. Any motivational strategy that treats these roles as isolated simplifies the complex and interdependent nature of peer review. Journal peer review is not a linear process but a dynamic system shaped by multiple, shifting expectations. Clearly, this reductionist approach to peer review reform does not reflect the realities of contemporary scholarly publishing.\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eAn integrated institutional lens on peer review reform\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eTo address the limitations of structural and interactional reform perspectives, this study applied an institutional angle and tried to integrate these two dimensions mentioned above. Institutional theory conceptualizes institutions as configurations of formal structures, normative expectations, and routinized practices that jointly shape social action (Scott, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR52\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2013\u003c/span\u003e). From this standpoint, the formal rules and procedures of peer review (the structural dimension) cannot be separated from the everyday behaviors, role expectations, and interactional norms through which peer review is enacted (the interactional dimension). Institutional analysis therefore provides a coherent framework for understanding why changes in one dimension may or may not translate into changes in the other.\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eWithin this framework, peer review can be understood as both an organizational structure and an institutionalized norm in academic life. As Thornton et al. (\u003cspan citationid=\"CR62\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2012\u003c/span\u003e) notes, institutions combine regulative, normative, and cultural-cognitive elements; similarly, prior research conceptualizes peer review as a taken-for-granted academic institution (Wang \u0026amp; Horta, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR24\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2025\u003c/span\u003e). Meyer and Rowan (1991) argue that institutions \u0026ldquo;involve normative obligations\u0026rdquo; yet enter social life as external facts that actors must accommodate (p. 42). Peer review has accordingly been naturalized as the disciplinary \u0026ldquo;gold standard\u0026rdquo; (Mayden, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR36\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2012\u003c/span\u003e) and as a professional obligation for researchers (Horta \u0026amp; Wang, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR24\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2025\u003c/span\u003e), shaping how academics understand their roles and responsibilities.\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eFrom an institutional perspective, researchers attend not only to the formalized programs and procedures of peer review but also to the concrete interactions among authors, editors, and reviewers, because these two levels are deeply intertwined. Institutions \u0026ldquo;operate primarily by affecting persons\u0026rsquo; prospective bets about the collective environment and collective activity\u0026rdquo; (Jepperson, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR26\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e1991\u003c/span\u003e, p. 147). Thus, researchers\u0026rsquo; expectations for reform necessarily encompass both structural adjustments and interactional improvements, reflecting how they experience and interpret the functioning of the peer-review institution.\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eGuided by this institutional perspective, the present study examines Chinese academics\u0026rsquo; expectations for reform at both the structural and interactional levels. By analyzing how researchers envision changes to procedural rules as well as to situated interactional practices, the study illuminates the conditions under which peer-review reforms may enhance legitimacy, effectiveness, and alignment with the lived realities of academic work.\u003c/p\u003e \u003cdiv id=\"Sec3\" class=\"Section2\"\u003e \u003ch2\u003eMethodology\u003c/h2\u003e \u003cp\u003eThis study adopted a qualitative research design to explore Chinese researchers\u0026rsquo; expectations and suggestions for improving journal peer review. The data analyzed in this article form part of a larger research project that examines Chinese researchers\u0026rsquo; attitudes toward, and participation in, peer review for both Chinese-language and international journals. Within this broader project, the study focused on seven elite research universities in China. Academics in these institutions are typically more deeply engaged in research activities, including publishing in national and international journals and serving as reviewers for both domestic and international outlets, making them particularly well positioned to reflect on the functioning and reform of peer review (Horta \u0026amp; Wang, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR24\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2025\u003c/span\u003e; Lu, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR34\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2022\u003c/span\u003e).\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003e Aligned with the aims of the larger project, participant selection was primarily based on their prior peer-review experience (more than two reviews). To construct a sample that met this criterion, the author systematically searched the official websites of the targeted universities to identify all eligible individuals and obtain their contact information. Using a purposive \u0026ldquo;total\u0026rdquo; sampling strategy, no additional eligibility requirements were imposed beyond the aforementioned criteria (Patton, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR46\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2014\u003c/span\u003e), resulting in 41 participants agreeing to take part in this study.\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eAmong the participants, there were 11 females and 30 males. Their disciplinary backgrounds ranged from the humanities and social sciences to science and engineering. Sixteen participants had reviewed exclusively for international journals, whereas the remaining seventeen had experience reviewing for both Chinese and international journals. Given that academic rank may influence researchers\u0026rsquo; reviewing attitudes and behaviors (Wang et al., \u003cspan citationid=\"CR66\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2022\u003c/span\u003e), this study also collected participants\u0026rsquo; academic rank information. The sample included 12 assistant professors, 16 associate professors, and 13 full professors, indicating a reasonable level of representativeness across academic ranks.\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eData were collected through one-on-one interviews conducted between October 2023 and August 2024. Prior to the interviews, each participant received an informed consent form via email, which outlined the overall aims and procedures of the research project. Using a semi-structured interview protocol, participants were asked about their experiences reviewing for international journals as well as their general attitudes toward journal peer review. Importantly, participants\u0026rsquo; expectations and suggestions for improving peer review were also elicited, serving as the core analytical material for this study. With participants\u0026rsquo; consent, all interviews \u0026ndash; with the exception of two \u0026ndash; were audio-recorded, each lasting approximately 60 minutes, and fully transcribed for subsequent analysis. For the two interviews that were not recorded, detailed notes were taken during and immediately after the interviews and were included in the analysis.\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eTo address the research questions, the analysis focused on three dimensions: (1) researchers\u0026rsquo; expectations regarding improvements to the structural aspects of peer review; (2) their suggestions derived from micro-level reviewing experiences; and (3) areas of consensus and tension within these expectations and suggestions. The initial coding frame based on these dimensions was complemented by an inductive approach through which interview segments relevant to the predetermined codes were identified, compared, and refined. Member checking was employed to enhance within-sample triangulation and to strengthen the credibility of the interpretations. The following section presents the key findings emerging from this analytical process.\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/div\u003e"},{"header":"Findings","content":"\u003cp\u003eShared expectations for structural reforms in peer review\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eFour overarching themes emerged that capture Chinese academics’ shared expectations for both leveraging the strengths of peer review and reforming its procedural design: (1) strengthening feedback and procedural fairness, (2) emphasizing review quality and rigor, (3) enhancing the reuse of review reports, and (4) promoting responsible AI use. Taken together, these expectations reflect a broader concern with optimizing the macro-level functions of peer review, ensuring that the system not only evaluates manuscripts effectively but also supports knowledge circulation, accountability, and systemic efficiency.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003eStrengthening feedback and procedural fairness\u003c/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003ePeer review is often described as a “black-box” process (Smith, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR55\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2006\u003c/span\u003e). Reviewers are invited by journals and editors to evaluate submitted manuscripts, and their assessments play a central role in editorial decision-making. Yet despite their essential contribution, reviewers are frequently excluded from subsequent stages of the process. From the reviewer’s perspective, T19 emphasized the importance of receiving follow-up feedback on how their comments were used and on the final decision regarding the manuscript, arguing that such transparency would signal respect for reviewers’ work and acknowledge their intellectual contribution.\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003e \u003cem\u003eOnce I submit a review, I receive no follow-up from the journal. I am not informed of the manuscript’s final decision or how my comments affected it. In practice, there is no feedback on the outcome or the use of my review, and the process ends once I submit my report. (T19-Male-Sociology-Associate professor)\u003c/em\u003e \u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eIn addition to concerns about follow-up procedures, participants frequently highlighted the importance of fairness, particularly in relation to the role and conduct of editors. From the reviewer’s standpoint, they emphasized that editors should respect reviewers’ judgments rather than rely on personal preferences (T23). From the author’s perspective, they stressed that manuscripts should be evaluated by qualified experts and treated equitably, with reduced influence from institutional or reputational biases (T31). These expectations align with previous research showing that scholars increasingly call for improvements in diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility within peer review processes (Kohrs et al., \u003cspan citationid=\"CR30\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2026\u003c/span\u003e).\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eIf peer review is to serve as the core standard for publication, the process must be procedurally fair. Manuscripts should be evaluated by qualified experts, and editorial decisions should be grounded in reviewers’ judgments. Editors and reviewers need clearly defined roles and mutual respect to sustain a sound publication system. (T23-Male-Education-Professor)\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003e \u003cem\u003eRegarding the peer review system, I believe editors should act more fairly and treat researchers equally. Decisions should not be influenced by whether an author comes from a well-known group or a prestigious team. (T31-Male-Computer science-Associate professor)\u003c/em\u003e \u003c/p\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003eEmphasizing review quality\u003c/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe second area that Chinese academics consistently emphasized is the improvement of review quality. Almost all participants in this study reported encountering extremely poor review comments, describing them as either excessively harsh or lacking substantive value. Prior studies have examined several effective approaches, such as developing review-quality instruments to guide reviewers in structuring their reports (Rooyen et al., \u003cspan citationid=\"CR48\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e1999\u003c/span\u003e; Sizo et al., \u003cspan citationid=\"CR54\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2025\u003c/span\u003e) and enhancing transparency in the peer review process (Wicherts, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR67\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2016\u003c/span\u003e). In the present study, participants proposed an additional mechanism aimed at both monitoring review quality and safeguarding reviewers’ identities: the delayed release of all review comments:\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003e \u003cem\u003eI think journals should either make review reports public, adopt open peer review, or implement fully double-blinded review. Posting all correspondence and records online would show who reviews diligently, who gives favors, and who is lenient. Authors’ responses would also reveal their competence and the quality of the manuscript. To protect reviewers, double-blind review or delayed release of reports and responses – e.g., after three years – could be used. (T31-Male-Computer science-Associate professor)\u003c/em\u003e \u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eIdeally, enhancing incentives and increasing stakeholder involvement have the potential to strengthen the quality and impartiality of journal peer review (Kadaifci et al., \u003cspan citationid=\"CR27\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2025\u003c/span\u003e). In practice, however, it is uncertain whether reviewers possess sufficient motivation to devote the substantial time and effort required for more rigorous evaluations. Participants’ calls for improved review quality and greater rigor further underscore a systemic weakness in the current peer review model: its procedural design lacks robust mechanisms to ensure, monitor, and enforce the quality of manuscript evaluation (Newton, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR43\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2010\u003c/span\u003e).\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003eEnhancing the reuse of review reports\u003c/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eReviewers’ comments are produced by peers within the same scholarly community. There are precedents in which a researcher’s commentary has been published as a standalone article in the same journal, demonstrating the dialogic potential of peer review\u003csup\u003e2\u003c/sup\u003e. However, due to the “black box” nature of the process, the academic value of reviewers’ reports is often underestimated or even overlooked (Ross-Hellauer, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR49\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2017\u003c/span\u003e). T41, an expert in library and information science, emphasized that review comments hold scholarly value not only for authors but also for the broader research community. She encouraged journals to increase the openness and reuse of review reports, enabling them to serve as resources for further analysis and knowledge development:\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003e \u003cem\u003eReviews from high-quality journals are often excellent, and we should find better ways to use them. Currently, they remain in a black box and are not public, yet they have clear academic value. One option is to publish the article together with the reviewers’ comments after publication, with reviewers’ consent. Readers can gain new insights, and such an approach could further scientific exchange. (T41-Female-Library and information science-Assistant professor)\u003c/em\u003e \u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eConsidering the dialogue nature of peer review, T27, an associate professor in finance suggested extending the interaction between reviewers and authors after the manuscript is published. All of these proposals lead to uncover and amplify the scholarly value of peer review, thereby contributing to the maintenance and development of the academic community:\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003e \u003cem\u003eTo make the peer review process more valuable and constructive, one possibility is to facilitate a dialogue between reviewers and authors after a manuscript is published. Through subsequent academic activities, the review process can be extended as a reflective, even debate-like, exercise that focuses on the work rather than the individuals involved. (T27-Female-Finance-Associate professor)\u003c/em\u003e \u003c/p\u003e \u003cdiv id=\"Sec8\" class=\"Section2\"\u003e \u003ch2\u003ePromoting responsible use of AI in peer review\u003c/h2\u003e \u003cp\u003eMost participants in science and engineering expressed concerns about the low efficiency and limited effectiveness of the current peer review process. Although recent advances in generative AI have introduced new possibilities for assisting or even partially automating peer review (Checco et al., \u003cspan citationid=\"CR6\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2021\u003c/span\u003e), researchers in this study adopted a notably cautious stance toward such technologies. Seven participants acknowledged that AI could support journals and reviewers with routine tasks, such as identifying and matching suitable reviewers or summarizing the main content of a manuscript. However, none believed that AI could function as a qualified reviewer at the current stage because they felt it lacks the capacity to evaluate a paper’s novelty and intellectual contribution. As a result, AI-assisted peer review emerges as a shared imaginary among Chinese researchers and is viewed primarily as a tool for procedural support rather than a substitute for human scholarly judgment.\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003e \u003cem\u003eAI can assist in the review process by, for example, automatically identifying low-quality or potentially plagiarized manuscripts. During peer review, AI could help summarize the main content of a manuscript in advance, allowing me to decide whether to take on the review. It can also help me grasp the key points quickly, saving time. In the future, AI might be able to evaluate a manuscript’s novelty, but at present this still requires human judgment. AI can only serve as an aid. (T38-Male-Computer science-Assistant professor)\u003c/em\u003e \u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003e \u003cem\u003ePeer review is inherently imperfect due to human limitations. Some basic tasks could be assisted by AI, which is impartial if programmed without subjective criteria, such as matching manuscripts with suitable reviewers. Assessing a manuscript’s novelty and contribution still requires human judgment. (T8-Female-Education-Associate professor)\u003c/em\u003e \u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eChinese academics’ expectations for improving peer review structure focus on several shared areas, including transparency, fairness, review quality, academic value, and technology-assisted support. These expectations reflect a strong consensus on the legitimacy of peer review: although the process is not flawless, there is broad agreement that it can and should be improved (Mulligan et al., \u003cspan citationid=\"CR40\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2013\u003c/span\u003e). A key challenge, however, lies in determining who is responsible for implementing these improvements and whether they possess sufficient incentives to do so. The following section examines the tensions embedded in researchers’ micro-level expectations of peer review, drawing on their interactions and experiences. This analysis highlights the complexity of aligning the interests of different stakeholders and underscores the practical difficulties involved in enacting meaningful reforms within the peer review system.\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eTensions in interaction-based expectations for peer review\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/div\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003eAmbiguous responsibility boundaries between reviewers and editors\u003c/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAs central actors in the peer review process, participants suggested that reviewers could take on additional responsibilities, including checking the validity and credibility of submitted manuscripts. T31, an associate professor in computer science, argued strongly from the author’s view that journals should require reviewers to verify the code included in submissions in order to prevent research misconduct and potential plagiarism.\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003e \u003cem\u003eIn our field of computer science, it is crucial to validate experiments. Some authors claim excellent experimental results that cannot withstand verification. Reviewers should require that the authors make their code publicly available and reproducible so that the results can be independently replicated. I believe reviewers should be required to run the code on a virtual server to verify the experimental outcomes themselves. (T31-Male-Computer science-Associate professor)\u003c/em\u003e \u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eTo sustain a responsible peer review process, reviewers emphasized that journals should assume a greater share of the initial checking and screening tasks in order to reduce reviewers’ workload. These tasks include conducting plagiarism checks (T36), requiring authors to provide necessary publication records to prevent minor revisions of previously published work (T36), and offering clearer and more detailed reviewer guidelines (T18). Reviewers expected to have a well-defined understanding of their responsibilities and the standards they are expected to meet. In short, they argued that “the scholarly evaluation should be carried out by reviewers, whereas the remaining checks should be handled by the journal (T2)”. Representing the reviewers’ standpoint, T21 articulated her expectation for a more responsible and proactive editorial team:\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003e \u003cem\u003eI certainly expect a stricter and more responsible editorial team. First, editors need to have a clear positioning for their journal, defining the level of innovation and quality they require. They typically conduct an initial screening, and for top journals, less than 10% of submissions advance to the next stage. (T21-Female-Environmental science-Associate professor)\u003c/em\u003e \u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eIn addition to reviewers’ expectations, authors also expressed a strong desire for editors to play a more active role in ensuring the quality of peer review. They expected editors to carefully examine reviewers’ comments to identify cases of irresponsible reviewing or potential bias, which in turn would help ensure that their own manuscripts are evaluated more fairly.\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eAfter reviewers complete their reports, editors still need to carefully consider the comments rather than simply forwarding them. Editors should provide their own assessment, which can reassure authors. Even though reviewers write extensively, the editors are aware of the key points and exercise judgment. (T28-Female-Psychology- Assistant professor)\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eThis juxtaposition highlights a fundamental tension embedded in the peer review process. On the one hand, reviewers seek clearer guidance, more frequent feedback, and better alignment between manuscripts and their areas of expertise, reflecting their expectations for adequate institutional support in fulfilling the reviewing task (Schroter et al., \u003cspan citationid=\"CR51\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2018\u003c/span\u003e). On the other hand, journals expect reviewers to act responsibly, exercise sound judgment, and diligently fulfill their evaluative duties, treating peer review as a normative professional obligation (COPE, 2017). These dual expectations generate a form of reciprocal pressure rooted in ambiguously defined responsibilities: while journals rely on reviewers’ voluntary yet conscientious labor, reviewers operate within institutional arrangements that offer limited clarification, support, or recognition. As a result, journals and reviewers remain interdependent but not fully aligned, producing persistent tensions between normative expectations and practical reviewing conditions.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003eConflicting demands among journals, authors, and reviewers\u003c/h3\u003e\n \u003cp\u003eThe second tension concerns the conflicting demands among journals, authors, and reviewers. Journals seek to shorten the publication timeline in order to remain competitive amid rising submission volumes and increasing pressure from publishers. However, reviewers frequently report that this institutional pressure is being shifted onto them. The compressed review deadlines imposed by journals leave reviewers feeling overwhelmed, thereby intensifying their workload and straining their capacity to conduct thorough evaluations:\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eSome professors review thirty to forty manuscripts in a single month. Reviewing almost every day and writing detailed comments can be exhausting. Currently, many journals impose very strict deadlines to shorten publication times, often requiring reviews to be completed in ten days or two weeks. This shifts significant pressure onto reviewers, which I consider disrespectful. Ideally, these practices could be revised, but in reality it is difficult due to the intense competition among journals. (T30-Male-Materials science-Professor)\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eIn this situation, reviewers hope for longer and more flexible review timelines so that they can properly fulfill their responsibilities. However, this expectation directly conflicts with journals’ demands to accelerate the publication process, creating a complex tension that complicates efforts to improve peer review.\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eReviewers can provide careful evaluations if they have sufficient time. However, journals and editors often impose strict deadlines and constantly urge reviewers to complete their assessments. Therefore, it would be preferable to allow reviewers more time. (T34-Male-Electrical and electronic engineering-Professor)\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eFor authors, expectations are also dual. On the one hand, they hope journals will process and publish their manuscripts as quickly as possible. On the other hand, they expect reviewers to conduct thorough and responsible evaluations and to provide meaningful, constructive feedback. In other words, authors place strong emphasis on both the speed and the quality of review. Consequently, they expect reviewers’ behavior to be monitored and appropriately regulated to ensure that their manuscripts are evaluated fairly and professionally:\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003e \u003cem\u003eI think the peer review system should include a mechanism for evaluating reviewers, such as a scoring system for review quality or a way for authors to provide feedback on reviewers’ comments. I feel the current review process is somewhat harsh and taxing. While some requests are reasonable, increasingly there are excessive and overly detailed demands, which many in our field complain about. (T3-Female-Biology-Associate professor)\u003c/em\u003e \u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eMoreover, from the authors’ perspective, participants highlighted the unequal power relationship between authors and reviewers. In order to secure publication, authors often felt compelled to compromise even when they disagreed with reviewers’ comments. Consequently, they expressed a desire to rebalance this power dynamic within the peer review system:\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003e Sometimes reviewers raise issues without fully understanding the manuscript, just to complete the review. As an author, I must address their comments or risk being seen as uncooperative. In one case, I disagreed with a minor suggestion, but the reviewer insisted, and I ultimately had to compromise. This creates an awkward situation where authors must follow reviewers’ opinions even if they disagree. (T13-Female-Education-Assistant professor)\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eHowever, given the inherent roles and functions of editors, reviewers, and authors in the review process, it is difficult to fundamentally shift the entrenched power relations between reviewers and reviewees (Lipworth \u0026amp; Kerridge, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR33\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2011\u003c/span\u003e). This structural constraint further contributes to the complexity of improving the peer review system. Editors, reviewers, and authors each have their own demands, but these demands often pull against one another or even come into direct conflict (Lipworth \u0026amp; Kerridge, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR33\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2011\u003c/span\u003e). The root of this tension lies in the objective differences in their roles (or positions) within the peer review process, as well as the changing external research environment in which the system operates (Horta \u0026amp; Wang, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR24\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2025\u003c/span\u003e). Factors such as the surge in publication volume, increasing pressure on researchers to publish, and the extension of research time – which consequently forces scholars to sacrifice the time that might otherwise be devoted to reviewing – create external pressures that are transferred onto different actors within the system. As a result, when each group proposes suggestions for improving peer review from its own standpoint, significant tensions and even mutual accusations tend to emerge.\u003c/p\u003e \u003cdiv id=\"Sec11\" class=\"Section2\"\u003e \u003ch2\u003eDivergent standards for reviewing responsibilities\u003c/h2\u003e \u003cp\u003eMany previous studies have found a broad consensus among researchers that participating in peer review is part of their professional responsibility (Donovan et al., \u003cspan citationid=\"CR11\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2020\u003c/span\u003e; Horta \u0026amp; Wang, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR24\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2025\u003c/span\u003e; Nobarany et al., \u003cspan citationid=\"CR44\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2016\u003c/span\u003e). However, this study reveals that Chinese reviewers hold divergent views regarding the standards of such responsibility, that is, how many manuscripts can be considered “enough” for a reviewer to evaluate.\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eOne view is that a reviewer’s workload should correspond to their own scholarly output. According to this perspective, journals should assign review tasks based on potential reviewers’ publication records, with researchers who publish more frequently expected to take on a larger share of reviewing work. Following the same reciprocal logic, three participants argued that for each paper a researcher publishes, he or she should review at least three manuscripts in return, thereby contributing proportionally to the academic community.\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eIn the past, I might publish a dozen papers as the corresponding author each year. When we submit our own manuscripts, it is normal to review other submissions from the journal. However, for those who rarely publish, they are still assigned many manuscripts to review even though they do not contribute much themselves. This creates a sense of unfairness. (T30-Male-Materials science-Professor )\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eThe other view is that “enough is enough”, meaning that standards of reviewing responsibility should be based on a reviewer’s actual contribution. Once reviewers have fulfilled what they consider a reasonable amount of reviewing or when they lack sufficient time, they should have the right to decline review invitations. To make such a standard feasible, T16 suggested that journals and even the broader academic community establish a shared reviewer record. This system would allow review tasks to be allocated more appropriately, rather than repeatedly relying on the same individuals.\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eI think journals should maintain a reviewer credit record, tracking how many reviews each person completes and declines. No one should receive too many review invitations. Reviewers should only handle a few manuscripts when they have the capacity, and journals should allocate review assignments more reasonably. (T16-Male-Earth and space science-Associate professor)\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eThese divergent views are not a simple value opposition but the result of a complex interplay among institutional arrangements, resource constraints, academic culture, and role expectations. In Chinese academic systems, publication quantity and journal prestige remain central criteria for evaluation and promotion (Huang et al., \u003cspan citationid=\"CR25\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2021\u003c/span\u003e). This structure allows highly productive scholars to gain greater academic returns, thereby reinforcing the legitimacy of the “output-based contribution” view. The underlying moral logic is that those who benefit more from the system should give more back to the academic community. In contrast, when peer-review labor is not formally recognized or rewarded in evaluation systems, scholars tend to allocate their limited time to activities that bring direct career benefits (Horta \u0026amp; Jung, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR23\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2024\u003c/span\u003e), which strengthens the appeal of the “enough is enough” position. Addressing these tensions does not lie in choosing one side over the other but in designing institutional mechanisms that balance reciprocal fairness with respect for individual time constraints and actual capacity.\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/div\u003e \u003cdiv id=\"Sec12\" class=\"Section2\"\u003e \u003ch2\u003eContradictions in reward and sanction practices\u003c/h2\u003e \u003cp\u003eTo enhance reviewers’ motivation, Chinese researchers expressed differing views on the forms and effectiveness of rewards. One perspective emphasized the importance of material incentives. Participants noted that the voluntary nature of peer review often results in reviewers’ contributions being undervalued. Therefore, they suggested that journals should encourage participation by providing appropriate financial compensation:\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003e \u003cem\u003ePeer review is unpaid and entirely voluntary. From the editor’s perspective, it is becoming increasingly difficult to find suitable reviewers, especially when they are asked to complete heavy workloads on short notice for no compensation. From the reviewer’s perspective, the work is essentially fueled by goodwill. If the system is to improve, journals could consider offering some form of material compensation, which might motivate more researchers to participate, given the significant time involved. Alternatives such as discounts on publication fees or other forms of support could also encourage broader engagement in the review process. (T25-Female-Psychology-Associate professor)\u003c/em\u003e \u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eHowever, not all participants agreed with this perspective. Some believed that the voluntary nature of peer review is preferable, as it fosters mutual support within the academic community. Additionally, they expressed concern that financial incentives from journals might impose stricter or more burdensome obligations on reviewers. At the same time, participants suggested that journals could encourage engagement in peer review through reputational rewards, such as increasing the visibility of reviewers’ contributions:\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003e \u003cem\u003eI don’t think most people care much about the money. Payment might make reviewers more responsive, but once you accept it, the journal is in a position to demand that you meet strict deadlines, which makes me hesitate. That’s why I feel peer review works better as a voluntary, community-based practice. It’s a reciprocal process in which scholars contribute their time to support one another within the academic community. (T25-Male-Systems and control engineering-Professor)\u003c/em\u003e \u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003e \u003cem\u003eI think reputational incentives could be made more visible. Many journals already acknowledge strong review work or issue certificates, but this could be made more systematic. A more structured approach might help motivate more reviewers. (T20-Male-Environmental science-Assistant professor)\u003c/em\u003e \u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eRegarding sanctions for unethical behavior, some participants argued that, from the authors’ perspective, both editors and reviewers should be held strictly accountable:\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003e \u003cem\u003eSome associate editors may manipulate the peer-review process, and this calls for institutional safeguards. If someone has a history of manipulating reviews or other serious misconduct, this record should be permanently kept and made known, so that they are excluded from all review systems in the future. (T31-Male-Computer science-Associate professor)\u003c/em\u003e \u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eIn contrast, from the reviewers’ perspective, the emphasis was on self-discipline in fulfilling their own responsibilities. Consequently, they resisted strict punitive measures and emphasized the importance of maintaining autonomy in participating in academic activities.\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003e \u003cem\u003eOne problem now is that reviewers often return their reports very slowly, which makes the review cycle extremely long. However, it is not very feasible to enforce strict rules in this situation. In the end, it still relies on reviewers’ self-discipline and their willingness to regard peer review as part of their responsibility as researchers. (T12-Female-Political geography-Assistant professor)\u003c/em\u003e \u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eThis finding highlights a pronounced divergence between authors and reviewers regarding incentives and sanctions in peer review. Such divergence can even be observed within the same group, as seen in reviewers’ differing views on which types of rewards are effective. The tension reflects role-based expectations in the peer review process, with authors viewing reviewing as a reciprocal obligation, while reviewers prefer to rely on intrinsic motivation with minimal external constraints. These insights suggest that improving peer review requires carefully balancing the expectations of different roles to maintain both efficiency and engagement.\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/div\u003e "},{"header":"Discussion and conclusion","content":"\u003cp\u003eThis paper examines Chinese researchers’ expectations for improving peer review by integrating both macro-structural and micro-interactional perspectives. At the structural level, four major themes emerged: strengthening feedback and procedural fairness, emphasizing review quality, enhancing the reuse of review reports and promoting responsible use of AI. These findings align with prior survey studies showing that researchers commonly expect peer review to become more efficient and produce higher-quality evaluations (Adam, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR1\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2025\u003c/span\u003e; Malički \u0026amp; Mehmani, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR35\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2024\u003c/span\u003e). They further suggest a shared understanding that peer review remains an indispensable institution for sustaining the academic community and safeguarding knowledge production (Mulligan et al., \u003cspan citationid=\"CR40\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2013\u003c/span\u003e). Consequently, researchers hoped to refine the existing system and uncover greater scholarly value within it.\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eWith the rapid advancement of AI, technological tools offer promising avenues for improving the efficiency of peer review. However, consistent with earlier research, Chinese researchers emphasized that AI should serve only in an assistive capacity rather than replace human reviewers entirely (Bauchner \u0026amp; Rivara, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR4\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2024\u003c/span\u003e). This indicates that if journals intend to integrate AI into the review process, they must conduct rigorous assessments of its effectiveness and provide clear explanations to both authors and reviewers regarding its role and limitations to increase their acceptance of it. Such efforts are essential to maintaining trust and ensuring that technological innovations enhance, rather than undermine, the integrity of peer review.\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eAt the interactional level, this study shows that editors, authors, and reviewers hold distinct role-based expectations that generate tensions in the peer review process. Unclear responsibility boundaries lead reviewers and editors to expect each other to assume more checking work. Journals aim to accelerate publication, authors seek both speed and high-quality feedback, while reviewers want sufficient time for careful evaluation. Reviewers also differ in how they assess their responsibilities: some rely on reciprocal logic tied to publication output, while others emphasize voluntary contribution. Divergent expectations also appear regarding rewards and sanctions. Some reviewers support financial incentives, whereas others fear such rewards may compromise autonomy and therefore prefer reputational forms of recognition. These differences reflect the structurally distinct positions that each role occupies within peer review, which shape their evaluations of what improvement should mean (Lipworth \u0026amp; Kerridge, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR33\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2011\u003c/span\u003e). These findings suggest that peer review reform requires clarifying whose expectations are prioritized and balancing the needs of different roles to ensure a more legitimate and workable system.\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eNotably, these tensions are directly influenced and amplified by the broader scientific environment outside of peer review. Unlike the original purpose of peer review, which was to serve a small scientific community (Moxham \u0026amp; Fyfe, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR39\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2018\u003c/span\u003e), contemporary science faces a rapidly growing and increasingly professionalized population of researchers engaged in intense global competition (Fortunato et al., \u003cspan citationid=\"CR15\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2018\u003c/span\u003e). At the same time, the volume of academic publications has surged (El Shamieh \u0026amp; Chebly, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR12\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2024\u003c/span\u003e). Peer review, however, remains highly institutionalized and largely voluntary, and the labor of reviewers is rarely formally recognized or rewarded within the academic system, nor does it directly contribute to career advancement (Horta \u0026amp; Jung, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR23\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2024\u003c/span\u003e; Seghier, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR53\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2024\u003c/span\u003e). As a result, reviewers in central positions often define their reviewing responsibilities flexibly, sometimes partially or entirely opting out of this demanding and unrewarded activity. Consequently, strategies for improving peer review carry a dual implication: first, to ensure its function meets the expectations of different roles as much as possible; and second, to better align peer review with the evolving practices of modern science and knowledge production.\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThis study contributes to the development of peer review reform strategies by incorporating researchers’ perspectives. Researchers are both participants in and beneficiaries of the peer review process, yet their attitudes and expectations regarding evolving journal peer review have received limited attention in previous studies. Building on this contribution, incorporating researchers’ expectations into the reconsideration of peer review reform is analytically and practically meaningful for at least two reasons. First, researchers are not passive recipients of peer review arrangements but active institutional actors embedded in reviewing practices. As authors, reviewers, and sometimes editors, they occupy multiple roles and accumulate experiential knowledge about how peer review actually operates in practice. Their expectations therefore reflect not only individual preferences but also situated judgments formed through repeated engagement with institutional routines. Attending to these perspectives allows reform debates to move beyond abstract design principles and to engage with the practical wisdom and constraints encountered by those who enact peer review on a daily basis. Second, incorporating researchers’ voices provides an important corrective to reform agendas that are often initiated and framed by journals, publishers, or policy actors. While such initiatives tend to emphasize efficiency, transparency, or innovation, the effectiveness of peer review reforms ultimately depends on researchers’ acceptance, compliance, and everyday enactment. Peer review reforms are not merely organizational tools for journals; they are institutional interventions that directly shape researchers’ workloads, professional risks, and evaluative experiences. Bringing researchers’ expectations into the reform process thus helps to calibrate reform strategies, aligning institutional ambitions with the realities of academic practice.\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe findings of this study underscore the value of such calibration. Researchers expressed cautious and ambivalent attitudes toward widely promoted reforms such as open peer review and AI-assisted peer review, reflecting concerns about vulnerability, workload, and unintended consequences. Similarly, views diverged regarding reward mechanisms for peer review and sanctions for misconduct, suggesting that incentive-based reforms may generate new tensions rather than straightforward improvements. At the same time, there was broad consensus around the need for higher-quality, more effective, and more efficient peer review. Together, these patterns caution against overly radical or one-dimensional reform approaches – whether in procedural form or incentive design – and highlight the importance of grounding peer review reform in researchers’ shared expectations as well as their articulated concerns. Future research could build on findings of this study by empirically evaluating the efficiency and effectiveness of specific peer review reform strategies. Moreover, this study focused exclusively on Chinese researchers’ expectations. 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PLoS ONE 11(1):e0147913. \u003cspan class=\"ExternalRef\"\u003e\u003cspan class=\"RefSource\"\u003ehttps://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0147913\u003c/span\u003e\u003cspan address=\"10.1371/journal.pone.0147913\" targettype=\"DOI\" class=\"RefTarget\"\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/li\u003e \u003cli\u003e\u003cspan\u003eWolfram D, Wang P, Hembree A, Park H (2020) Open peer review: promoting transparency in open science. Scientometrics 125(2):1033\u0026ndash;1051. \u003cspan class=\"ExternalRef\"\u003e\u003cspan class=\"RefSource\"\u003ehttps://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-020-03488-4\u003c/span\u003e\u003cspan address=\"10.1007/s11192-020-03488-4\" targettype=\"DOI\" class=\"RefTarget\"\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/li\u003e \u003cli\u003e\u003cspan\u003eYu H, Liang Y, Xie Y (2024) Can peer review accolade awards motivate reviewers? A large-scale quasi-natural experiment. Humanit Social Sci Commun 11(1):1557. \u003cspan class=\"ExternalRef\"\u003e\u003cspan class=\"RefSource\"\u003ehttps://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-024-04088-w\u003c/span\u003e\u003cspan address=\"10.1057/s41599-024-04088-w\" targettype=\"DOI\" class=\"RefTarget\"\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003c/ol\u003e"},{"header":"Footnotes","content":"\u003col\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003cspan\u003e The International Conference on Learning Representations (ICLR) is among the leading conferences in computer science. It is globally recognized for showcasing and publishing state-of-the-art research in deep learning, along with its key applications in areas such as computer vision, natural language understanding, gaming, robotics, and more.\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003cspan\u003e For example, in 1995, Sutton and Staw published \u0026ldquo;What Theory Is Not\u0026rdquo; in Administrative Science Quarterly, followed by DiMaggio\u0026rsquo;s (\u003cspan citationid=\"CR10\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e1995\u003c/span\u003e) \u0026ldquo;Comments on \u0026lsquo;What Theory Is Not\u0026rsquo;\u0026rdquo; in the same issue. Although there is no direct evidence that DiMaggio served as a reviewer for Sutton and Staw\u0026rsquo;s manuscript, this exchange illustrates a broader point: reviewer comments can function not only as a mechanism of quality assurance, but also as a form of intellectual dialogue between authors and reviewers.\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003c/ol\u003e"}],"fulltextSource":"","fullText":"","funders":[],"hasAdminPriorityOnWorkflow":false,"hasManuscriptDocX":true,"hasOptedInToPreprint":true,"hasPassedJournalQc":"","hasAnyPriority":true,"hideJournal":true,"highlight":"","institution":"","isAcceptedByJournal":false,"isAuthorSuppliedPdf":false,"isDeskRejected":"","isHiddenFromSearch":false,"isInQc":false,"isInWorkflow":false,"isPdf":false,"isPdfUpToDate":true,"isWithdrawnOrRetracted":false,"journal":{"display":true,"email":"[email protected]","identity":"researchsquare","isNatureJournal":false,"hasQc":true,"allowDirectSubmit":true,"externalIdentity":"","sideBox":"","snPcode":"","submissionUrl":"/submission","title":"Research Square","twitterHandle":"researchsquare","acdcEnabled":true,"dfaEnabled":false,"editorialSystem":"","reportingPortfolio":"","inReviewEnabled":false,"inReviewRevisionsEnabled":true},"keywords":"peer review, Chinese academics, institutional theory, expectation, reviewer","lastPublishedDoi":"10.21203/rs.3.rs-8409119/v1","lastPublishedDoiUrl":"https://doi.org/10.21203/rs.3.rs-8409119/v1","license":{"name":"CC BY 4.0","url":"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/"},"manuscriptAbstract":"\u003cp\u003ePeer review is the central mechanism through which academic publishing ensures manuscript quality, yet it continues to face criticism for inefficiency, limited effectiveness, and various biases. Although many reform strategies have been proposed, they mostly focus on structural adjustments or on interventions targeting the roles of authors, reviewers, and editors, leaving researchers\u0026rsquo; perspectives insufficiently explored. To address this gap, this study adopts an integrated institutional lens and conducts qualitative interviews with 41 Chinese academics to examine their expectations for improving peer review in international journals. The findings show that researchers generally expect stronger feedback mechanisms, greater procedural fairness, higher review quality, wider reuse of review reports, and responsible use of artificial intelligence. At the same time, they experience tensions related to unclear responsibility boundaries between reviewers and editors, conflicting demands among different stakeholders, inconsistent standards for reviewing responsibilities, and contradictions in reward and sanction practices. These tensions are closely shaped and intensified by broader scientific environments beyond peer review. By foregrounding researchers\u0026rsquo; perceptions and experiences, the study offers evidence-based insights for developing more grounded and context-sensitive peer review reform strategies.\u003c/p\u003e","manuscriptTitle":"Beyond structural fixes: Expectations of Chinese academics for structural and interactional reform in peer review","msid":"","msnumber":"","nonDraftVersions":[{"code":1,"date":"2025-12-23 08:40:51","doi":"10.21203/rs.3.rs-8409119/v1","editorialEvents":[{"type":"communityComments","content":0}],"status":"published","journal":{"display":true,"email":"[email protected]","identity":"researchsquare","isNatureJournal":false,"hasQc":true,"allowDirectSubmit":true,"externalIdentity":"","sideBox":"","snPcode":"","submissionUrl":"/submission","title":"Research Square","twitterHandle":"researchsquare","acdcEnabled":true,"dfaEnabled":false,"editorialSystem":"","reportingPortfolio":"","inReviewEnabled":false,"inReviewRevisionsEnabled":true}}],"origin":"","ownerIdentity":"d90e6d88-c992-467c-9a84-695f0c9f5b1b","owner":[],"postedDate":"December 23rd, 2025","published":true,"recentEditorialEvents":[],"rejectedJournal":[],"revision":"","amendment":"","status":"posted","subjectAreas":[],"tags":[],"updatedAt":"2025-12-23T08:40:52+00:00","versionOfRecord":[],"versionCreatedAt":"2025-12-23 08:40:51","video":"","vorDoi":"","vorDoiUrl":"","workflowStages":[]},"version":"v1","identity":"rs-8409119","journalConfig":"researchsquare"},"__N_SSP":true},"page":"/article/[identity]/[[...version]]","query":{"redirect":"/article/rs-8409119","identity":"rs-8409119","version":["v1"]},"buildId":"XKTyCvWXoU3ODBz1xrDgd","isFallback":false,"isExperimentalCompile":false,"dynamicIds":[84888],"gssp":true,"scriptLoader":[]}