Peer review of manuscripts is labour-intensive and time-consuming. Individual reviewers might feel themselves overburdened with the amount of reviewing they are requested to do. Aiming to explore how stakeholder groups perceive reviewing burden and what they believe to be the causes of a potential overburdening of reviewers, we conducted focus groups with early-, mid-, and senior career scholars, editors, and publishers. By means of a thematic analysis, we aimed to identify the causes of overburdening of reviewers. First, we show that, across disciplines and roles, stakeholders believed that the reviewing burden is distributed unequally across members of the academic community, resulting in the overburdening of small groups of reviewers. Second, stakeholders believed this to be caused by (i) an increase in manuscript submissions; (ii) inefficient manuscript handling; (iii) lack of institutionalization of peer review; (iv) lack of reviewing instructions and (v) inadequate reviewer recruiting strategies. These themes were assumed to relate to an inadequate incentive structure in academia that favours publications over peer review. In order to alleviate reviewing burden, a holistic approach is required that addresses both the increased demand for and the insufficient supply of reviewing resources.

中文翻译：

---

同行评审人员负担过重：多方利益相关者的因果关系

手稿的同行评审是劳动密集型和耗时的。个别审阅者可能会觉得自己被要求进行的审阅量负担过重。为了探讨利益相关者团体如何看待审稿负担以及他们认为审稿人潜在负担过重的原因是什么，我们与早期、中期和高级职业学者、编辑和出版商进行了焦点小组讨论。通过专题分析，我们旨在找出审稿人负担过重的原因。首先，我们表明，跨学科和角色，利益相关者认为评审负担在学术界成员之间分配不均，导致评审员小组负担过重。其次，利益相关者认为这是由于 (i) 稿件提交量增加；(ii) 手稿处理效率低下；(iii) 同行评审缺乏制度化；(iv) 缺乏审查说明和 (v) 审查员招聘策略不足。这些主题被认为与学术界的激励机制不足有关，这种激励机制偏向于发表文章而不是同行评审。为了减轻审查负担，需要采取整体方法来解决审查资源需求增加和供应不足的问题。