Refereeing the Game of Peer Review

In this article, I depict the journal peer review process as a high-stakes game involving three parties: editor, reviewer, and author. In light of a not-infrequent transposition of what should have been a constructive professional development process into a self-promotional social process, critiques of peer review have abounded, such as the as-is process recently recommended by Eric Tsang and Bruno Frey in this journal. While the as-is process highlights and potentially remedies some of the abuses of the system, there may be less radical options through professional education and development to preserve the critical developmental function of peer review