Challenges in Achieving Timely and High-quality Peer Review in Scientific Publishing: A Critical Review with Future Perspectives

Peer review is the cornerstone of scientific publication and helps establish the credibility, truthfulness, and academic nature of science before its publication. However, despite all of this, peer reviewing continues to suffer from delays and poor quality of the peer review itself. Science editors frequently experience difficulties in obtaining appropriate peer reviewers, while authors have to endure lengthy decision-making processes, leading to slower dissemination of scientific information. Furthermore, the inconsistency in the skill level of the reviewers and lack of proper training of the reviewers make for another reason behind the low quality of peer reviews. This perspective review aims to identify the underlying reasons for these problems, evaluate the current efforts to resolve these issues, and propose possible solutions.