Protecting the integrity of peer review in the age of increasing reliance on artificial intelligence tools

SINCE the middle of the 20th century, peer review has played a key role in ensuring the integrity and quality of published scientific research. However, over the past 10 years, the foundations of this system have begun to wobble.

Reductions in funders’ budgets and increasing competition for the limited available funds have exacerbated the existing pressure on researchers to ‘publish or perish’. This has resulted in exponential growth in the number of papers produced. For example, in 2016, about 1.92 million papers were indexed by the Scopus and Web of Science publication databases. In 2022, that number had jumped to 2.82 million. Unfortunately, this growth in output is partly driven by an increase in the number of fraudulent and poor-quality papers submitted. It is therefore increasingly important that journals operate a policy of robust peer review.

While it is tempting to assume that incorporating artificial intelligence (AI) tools into the peer-review process would alleviate some of the pressure on the system, such tools can be a double-edged sword. Publishers are successfully using AI tools for administrative tasks such as plagiarism checking, identifying altered images and identifying potential reviewers for manuscripts. However, there is consensus that AI should not be used to review the content of submitted papers.

Full text: Boxer E. Protecting the integrity of peer review in the age of increasing reliance on artificial intelligence tools. Vet Record. 2026;198:312-13. https://doi.org/10.1002/vetr.70588