The Reviewer's Dilemma: Agricultural Peer Review Is Running on Borrowed Time

Peer review in agricultural science has long depended on a fragile bargain. Researchers submit manuscripts, editors recruit reviewers, and reviewers volunteer their time because the system requires it and because they believe in it. That bargain is now under strain. The volume of agricultural research is growing, the questions are becoming more interdisciplinary, and the same small pool of qualified reviewers is being asked to evaluate more work in less time. Preprints have not caused this problem, but they have exposed it. If open agricultural research is going to mature, it needs a review infrastructure of its own rather than a longer queue for the same unpaid volunteers.

The arithmetic of unpaid review

Most agricultural reviewers are not refusing to work. They are running out of hours. A soil scientist who reviews for three journals is also reviewing grant proposals, tenure files, and agency reports. An Extension specialist with subject-matter expertise may be one of a handful of people qualified to assess a narrow trial design. When that person receives a fourth or fifth request in a month, the rational response is to decline. Editors then face longer review times, more reminders, and a thinner pool of available experts.

The rise of preprints adds a new pressure, but it is not the same kind of pressure. Journal review is structured: an editor assigns a manuscript, sets a deadline, and expects a report. Preprint review is mostly informal. Readers comment, authors revise, and the record accumulates without a clear process. That informality can be valuable, but it can also push more scrutiny onto individual readers who have no institutional incentive to participate. The result is a system in which a few highly engaged researchers carry an outsized share of the vetting work.

Preprints did not create the problem

It is tempting to blame preprints for reviewer fatigue. The timeline does not support that. Agricultural peer review was already strained before preprint servers became common in the field. The underlying causes are familiar: growing submission volumes, specialized manuscripts that few people can assess, and a reward system that counts publications more than review service. Preprints have made the strain more visible because they create a parallel literature that also needs attention.

That visibility is useful. It shows that the agricultural research community has been treating review as an unlimited commons. A journal can add pages; a reviewer cannot add hours. A preprint server can post a paper in a day; a community cannot vet it in a day. If the field wants faster sharing and credible scrutiny, it has to build institutions that support both. It cannot rely on the same volunteers to do everything.

The missing layer

The preprint ecosystem needs a dedicated review layer that is neither a journal nor an informal comment section. That layer should be designed for working papers: lighter in scope than journal review, more structured than scattered comments, and transparent about what has and has not been checked. It should not attempt to certify every preprint. It should help readers distinguish between papers that have received substantive methodological scrutiny and those that have not.

This is where community review boards could help. A review board would be a standing group of researchers with relevant expertise, convened around a topic rather than a single manuscript. It could review a batch of preprints on irrigation scheduling, cover crop termination, or grain storage, producing short public assessments that authors can cite and readers can use. The board would not replace journal review. It would reduce the pressure on journal reviewers by catching obvious problems earlier and by giving authors a clear path to improve a working paper before submission.

What a community review board could look like

A practical model would begin small. A board might include five to seven researchers, a mix of senior and early-career scholars, with at least one practitioner or Extension specialist. It would meet quarterly, either virtually or alongside an existing professional meeting. Authors would opt in. The board would review a defined set of preprints, focusing on study design, data transparency, and whether the conclusions match the evidence. Reviews would be posted publicly and versioned. Authors could respond, and the board could issue a brief follow-up note.

The goal is not to recreate a journal. The goal is to create a review record that is useful, proportionate, and sustainable. Boards could be housed by professional societies, land-grant universities, or preprint servers themselves. Funding could come from modest institutional contributions or agency grants. The key is to recognize review as infrastructure, not as an unlimited favor.

The cost of doing nothing

The alternative is a slow erosion of trust. If reviewers keep declining, journals will take longer and publish less. If preprint readers keep encountering unreviewed claims without context, they may either overtrust or dismiss the entire format. Neither outcome serves agricultural science. The field needs a way to share work quickly without pretending that speed eliminates the need for scrutiny.

AgriXiv's own experience suggests that readers want help navigating unreviewed work. They want to know what has been checked, by whom, and with what limits. A community review board would not answer every question. It would, however, give the agricultural research community a way to share the burden of review rather than concentrate it on the same exhausted volunteers. That is a modest reform, but it is the kind of infrastructure that open agricultural science now requires.