pennswoods | Peer Review Crisis (Reply)

I have been assembling my dossier for full professor. It is not due until September 15th, but it take as lot of focus to locate, assemble, label and upload things that it's a time consuming process. There is also the fact that the department guidelines are out of date and don't fully match the guidelines on the Interfolio website where everything needs to be uploaded. I also have a small tight pit in my stomach every time I think of external reviewers. There need to be 5 and they all must be full professors. I submitted a list of 10 names and then I had to submit a list of 10 more because they were having trouble getting people (this was back in April and May). These cannot be people I have published or collaborated with. Unfortunately, I have published and collaborated with A LOT of people in my field.

Reviewer burnout is real and it's not just affecting peer review. Speaking of which, my PhD student and I submitted an article for review to a journal in September and they still have not gotten enough reviews. In other words, it's been almost a year! This is unbelieveably slow. What is happening is that people are saying yes and then ghosting. As an editor of another journal, I am experiencing similar issues with reviewers who say yes and dissappear (even people I know personally) or having to ask 12-15 people before I get 3 to agree.

The pit in my stomach grows when I think about one of these external reviewers ghosting me. If I don't have 5 external reviews, my application for full has failed. I have no control over this if it happens, just worry.