The number of scientific publications has doubled in 5 years, to more than 8 million in 2025. To get just one completed review, editors needed to send an average of 4.5 invitations in 2025 – double the number required in 2018, according to a report this year by the Silverchair content-hosting company.

A growing number of reviewers are employing AI tools: In a global survey of 1645 researchers across multiple scientific fields by the publisher Frontiers, just over half of respondents said they used AI for review tasks in 2025, including to help draft comments and in some cases to review methods and statistics. That’s up from 29% the previous year – despite many journals prohibiting those uses.

As AI’s capabilities grow, researchers and publishers are exploring how it can support peer review – and where it still falls short. One key area in which LLMs may shine is performing routinized, tedious checks for correctness that time-pressed human reviewers often skip. However, AI reviews may also make unreasonable requests for additional results. Some scientists add that AI reviews are verbose and tend to nitpick minor problems while failing to highlight the highest priority issues.
 

Source https://www.science.org/content/article/can-ai-help-solve-peer-review-crisis-here-are-its-promises-and-pitfalls#graphic

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