Each September, the global scholarly community pauses to reflect on the practice of peer review during Peer Review Week (PRW), an international, community-led event that celebrates the role of peer review in ensuring research integrity. This year, from September 15–19, 2025, the theme is especially timely: “Rethinking Peer Review in the AI Era.”

Why Peer Review Matters

Peer review is widely regarded as the cornerstone of scholarly communication. It provides quality control for academic publishing, ensures methodological rigor, and builds trust in the research record. At its best, peer review is a collaborative exchange that strengthens scholarship while maintaining accountability to disciplinary standards.

But peer review is also under strain. Reviewers are overburdened, processes can be opaque, and biases (whether conscious or systemic) continue to affect outcomes. The arrival of artificial intelligence has intensified these debates and forced us to ask fundamental questions about what peer review should look like in the decades ahead (Van Noorden, 2023).

AI Presence in Scholarly Publishing

AI tools are already woven into many aspects of scholarly publishing. Algorithms are increasingly being used in peer review to match manuscripts with suitable reviewers, improving the efficiency of reviewer identification. Artificial intelligence also supports content checks by detecting issues such as plagiarism, image manipulation, or data anomalies before publication (Naddaf, 2025). In addition, workflow processes benefit from automated tools that generate summaries and provide language polishing, offering assistance to both editors and authors. Finally, machine learning models contribute by flagging potential statistical or ethical concerns, serving as important quality indicators in the evaluation of scholarly work. Although these applications promise greater efficiency, they also raise important concerns: How trustworthy are the algorithms, who is responsible for overseeing their use, and to what extent might we risk delegating too much intellectual judgment to machines?

Evolving Questions in Peer Review

The choice of this year’s theme signals a growing recognition that AI is not a peripheral tool but a central force reshaping the scholarly landscape. Several urgent questions stand out:

• Human vs. machine judgment: Which aspects of peer review must remain distinctly human (e.g.s. contextual interpretation, ethical reasoning, and disciplinary expertise)?
• Ethics and transparency: How should journals and reviewers disclose the use of AI? Should there be standardized guidelines?
• Bias and equity: AI can reduce workload, but it can also replicate or amplify biases embedded in training data. What safeguards are needed?
• Training and literacy: How can reviewers and editors develop AI literacy so they can use these tools responsibly?
• New models of peer review: Could AI enable more open, structured, or reproducibility-focused peer review models that move beyond the traditional “gatekeeping” function?

Peer Review Week Events

This week’s events cover such issues as: How can AI be used to enhance, rather than undermine, reviewer integrity and transparency? What ethical guidelines should shape its application in this context? In addition, how can reviewers be trained and supported to use AI tools responsibly? And perhaps most importantly, what elements of peer review should remain distinctly human, preserving the critical judgment and ethical reasoning that machines cannot replicate?

A sample of events and recordings include:

AI in Peer Review: A Game Changer or a Governance Challenge? September 15th (7:00am EST)
A panel discussion organized by the Asian Council of Science Editors (ACSE) exploring the growing role of AI in peer review—from efficiency gains to governance concerns—and balancing innovation with responsibility.

Editor-in-Chief Editorial Gatekeeping in the Age of Generative AI September 17th (7:00am EST)
A panel discussion organized by the Asian Council of Science Editors offering an editor-in-chief’s perspective on maintaining high standards and integrity in peer review amid generative AI’s rise.

Superpowers You Can Learn From Peer Review September 17th (8:00am EST)
A webinar by Sci-Train that reframes peer review as a source of transferable skills—whether it’s critical thinking, ethical discernment, or strategic feedback.

Which Peer Review Tool Is Best For You? September 19th (8:00am EST)
A webinar by Sci-Train providing a comparative overview of different peer review tools—aiming to match technology to reviewer or editor needs effectively.

You can follow PRW conversation on social media using #PeerReviewWeek and #PRW2025.

 

Kevin Gunn is the Coordinator of Digital Scholarship at The Catholic University of America Libraries and the former editor-in-chief of College & Undergraduate Libraries. 

 

References

Lee Konstantinou. “Peer Review Paranoia.” The Chronicle of Higher Education. September 2, 2025.

Maryam Sayab, Roohi Ghosh, Gareth Dyke, Maria Machado. Rethinking Peer Review in the AI Era: Announcing the Theme for Peer Review Week 2025. The Scholarly Kitchen. June 10, 2025.

MDPI. Peer Review Week 2025: “Rethinking Peer Review in the AI Era.” MDPI. September 10, 2025.

Miryam Naddaf. “AI tool detects LLM-generated text in research papers and peer reviews.” Nature. September 11, 2025.

R. Ye, et al. “Are we there yet? Revealing the risks of utilizing large language models in scholarly peer review.” arXiv preprint arXiv:2412.01708, 2024.

Richard Van Noorden. “More than 10,000 Research Papers Were Retracted in 2023—A New Record.” Nature, December 12, 2023.

Shelley Stall, Guido Cervone, Caroline Coward, et al. Ethical and Responsible Use of AI/ML in the Earth, Space, and Environmental Sciences. Authorea. April 12, 2023.