The Academic Review Process: How Can We Make it More Efficient?

Recently many editors try to reduce the turnaround times of academic journals. Shorter turnaround times, however, will induce many additional submissions of low-quality papers, increasing significantly the workload of editors and referees, and the number of rejections prior to publication. I suggest several ideas how editors can shorten turnaround times and four ideas how they can still avoid frivolous submissions, thus improving the review process efficiency: higher submission fees; requiring authors to review papers in proportion to their submissions; using differential editorial delay—letting low-quality papers wait more; and banning papers from being submitted after a certain number of rejections.