The Peer Review Crisis Continues: What Comes Next?

As I prepare to wrap up my tenure as the editor-in-chief that began with the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, I feel strongly that I must address the crisis of peer review I have observed over the last 4 years. This crisis is not unique to the Journal of Social Work Education (JSWE), as I regularly commiserate with several other editors of leading social work journals who are struggling with the same challenge. In an earlier editorial from 2022 (Parrish, 2022), I noted this challenge and wondered whether it was due to the pandemic or if this crisis was indeed the new normal. I attempted to make the case for the importance of peer review. A year and half later, not enough has changed. Submissions are still surging, new journals are sprouting up soliciting peer review from our already limited pool of scholars, and it can take a very long time to find willing peer reviewers. The same small group of individuals committed to the scholarship of peer review remain just as committed, while it remains difficult to engage a broad representation of reviewers with the expertise and experience to ensure a diversity of high-quality social work scholarship.

With even more transparency, the reviewers who review most and write the best reviews for JSWE are mostly retired or at a very late stage in their careers. While I am so incredibly grateful to these committed reviewers who are willing to support social work scholarship so that our authors can continue to publish in JSWE and other venues, this is not sustainable. Nor is it ideal in a field where new ideas, voices, and methods are emerging, requiring new, emerging expertise and perspectives. Anecdotally, I hear of some mid-career and senior social work faculty advising early career faculty not to waste their time on peer review. I respectfully disagree, especially now that I have the vantage point as a journal editor. Peer review is an essential aspect of scientific practice and social work scholarship. While I certainly understand the pressure to publish to meet the continually rising bar for tenure and promotion, I hope that our profession will see the value more broadly in normalizing a better balance of publishing and peer review.

The Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) publication guidelines suggest that authors who benefit from the peer review process should also consider becoming reviewers (COPE Council, 2017). A good rule of thumb is to review at least one manuscript for every manuscript submitted, but there are benefits to reviewing more. Authors who consistently review tend to learn more about the peer review process, improve their own writing, and become more skilled in responding to peer reviews. They also have the privilege of reading emerging scholarship or research in their area of interest, while also helping to shape the quality of what is published. Consistent peer reviewers may also be invited to join an editorial board or one day be an editor of a journal.

There are many downsides to having a limited peer review pool for social work and allied journals. It slows down the speed of the peer review process, which directly affects early career scholars who are on the tenure clock and the speed at which new knowledge in our profession is disseminated. Perhaps most important, without a broad availability of reviewers across content areas, including new and emerging areas of study or methods, our authors may not receive informed or relevant peer review feedback that substantively improves their manuscript. This can affect the quality and inclusivity of published scholarship in our field. As an editor, it is disappointing when reviewers with the necessary expertise to offer useful, constructive, and actionable feedback for new and emerging issues in social work education are not available. The pressure of finding highly qualified and available reviewers can be a real challenge for editors in recent years, and that should alarm us all. Peer review is a necessary collective exercise for forming the scholarship of our profession.

To address this ongoing crisis, I encourage social work schools, colleges, and departments to communicate the value of peer review by requiring evidence of this activity in tenure and promotion packets, as well as annual reviews. Evidence could be produced using Clarivate’s Publons in Web of Science, where scholars could “record, verify and showcase” peer review contributions (https://webofscience.help.clarivate.com/en-us/Content/publons.html). Another idea is for journals to provide reviewers with the number of manuscripts reviewed and a summary of the quality of reviews annually. As an editor, I have provided a letter of support with this information for an early career scholar that requested this for a tenure packet. Ideally, peer review would count not only as service, but as social work scholarship so it is weighted more heavily. I hope that we can individually and collectively agree to invest more in the peer review process from which we all benefit. I am convinced that greater participation in this process will make us all better scholars individually, while also enhancing the quality of the published work of our profession.

At JSWE, our call for peer reviewers is open. The JSWE Editorial Advising Board welcomes applications from social work scholars with a beginning track record of publishing in peer reviewed journals. We no longer require a cover letter—interested reviewers only need to send a curriculum vitae to [email protected]. We also encourage mentorship of emerging doctoral students in the peer review process under existing reviewers if COPE ethical guidelines for peer reviewers are followed and credit is given to the mentee for the review (COPE Council, 2017). We deeply value our peer reviewers and recognize them annually at the JSWE reviewer reception at the Council on Social Work Education [CSWE] Annual Program Meeting. The JSWE Editorial Advisory Board also honors our best JSWE reviewer each year, and we would love to start recognizing more of our early and mid-career colleagues.

In this issue

This issue starts with a timely, invited article that proposes a 10th competency for the 2029 Educational Policy and Practice Standards (EPAS) titled, “Introducing Generative Artificial Intelligence Into the MSW Curriculum: A Proposal for the 2029 Educational Policy and Accreditation Standards” by Rodriguez, Goldkind, Victor, Hiltz, and Perron. This article discusses recent developments and guidance on the use of generative artificial intelligence for social work educators. While this is an issue that is likely overwhelming to many social work educators, including myself, it is important for us to become prepared to address this emerging technology in ethical and informed ways in social work. I am grateful to these authors for this important contribution to this scholarly conversation.

In the next article, Breaux, Timbers, and Thyer provide a point-of-view article titled, “Prohibiting Harmful Practices Against LGBTQIA+ Individuals and Students in Field Placement: Recommendations.” In this article, the authors highlight research describing the discrimination students identifying as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer or questioning, intersex, asexual or ally, and other sexual and gender minorities (LGBTQIA+) experience in field placements and then offer recommendations consistent with CSWE accreditation standards and the National Association of Social Workers Code of Ethics to increase equity now and in future EPAS. Next, Vohra-Gupta, Maclaine, Petruzzi, Kim, and Rhodes report on the results of a systemized review in “Using Critical Race Theory in Social Work Education to Prepare Antiracist Practitioners: A Systematized Review” and offer recommendations for integrating critical race theory in social work curricula. In “How Early Social Work Faculty Experienced Support in Their Doctoral Programs,” Krings, Mora, Bechara, Sánchez, Gutiérrez, Hawkins, and Austic report the results of a survey of early career faculty that assessed their experiences of support as underrepresented doctoral students. Findings have implications for developing a more inclusive, healthy professorate.

In “Provoking Reflection in Action in Experienced Practitioners: An Educational Intervention,” Regehr, Bogo, Paterson, Birze, Sewell, Fallon, and Regehr describe the development, refinement, and initial outcomes of exploratory intervention to improve decision making in experienced clinicians. Next, Lanzieri, Maher, and Munson report on the existing research in “Online Education: A Scoping Review Examining Learning and Satisfaction Outcomes in Social Work, Medicine, and Nursing” and discuss these outcomes in each profession and the implications for online social work education and future research. Finally, Lee and Parajuli round out the last full article in the current issue with “Incorporating Intersectionality of Gender and Race Into an Assignment: Students Interviewing Their Grandparents.” This article reports on the results of a mixed-methods study analyzing the intersectionality of race and gender in life history narrations of students from the perspective of their grandparent. The authors discuss the implications of this assignment for increasing interest among social work students in gerontology and better connection to their own cultural heritage.

This issue rounds out with four notes. The first research note, by Tyler and Walker, explores Bachelor of Social Work students’ perceptions of how well their group practice course prepared them for field internships in “Interpersonal Classroom Model: Groupwork at Social Work Field Internships.” In the next teaching note, “Training MSW Students in Sector-Specific Macro Content: An Innovative Behavioral Health Leadership Initiative,” Richardson, Brady, Phipps, Ussery, Chandler, and Chavez describe an initiative to enhance students’ macrolevel competencies in behavioral health by partnering with a Medicaid managed care organization. The third teaching note, “Adapting to Online Live Streamed OSCEs,” by Sewell, Occhiuto, Tarshis, Kalmanovich, and Todd, describes a pivot from in person to online Objective Structured Clinical Examinations (OSCEs) during the COVID-19 pandemic and offers insights based on feedback from the teaching team for informing the use of OSCEs for preparing students for online practice. The final teaching note, by Baldwin-White, titled “Working Toward an Inclusive, Antiracist, and Antioppresive Research Methods Pedagogy,” describes the development of a social work research methods course that the author argues is more inclusive and antiracist.