Scholarly publishing would not be where it is today if it weren’t for the PDF and email. Given the enormous numbers involved, these technologies are even more important because they support the entire system. A 2014 study based on Scopus data demonstrated that the number of published articles continuously increased from 1.3 million in 2003 to 2.4 million in 2013 and there is no reason to believe that this trend has changed since .
If researchers had to continue sending hard copies of manuscripts via postal mail and editors and reviewers had to limit their communications to offline systems, this level of growth would not be possible. Most journals use submission systems, which are basically electronic versions of the old log books journals used for recording and tracking manuscripts, to speed up the process and meet the modern researcher’s need to see their research published quickly. The pitfalls of peer review
Researchers still have good reason to believe that peer review is slow and inefficient despite the various improvements and advancements. One reason is that the typical procedures for submission and review that they encounter still do not appear to be appropriate for the internet age. Despite a lot of to-and-fro, uploading, and downloading, and frequently frustration, referees still typically receive a file, download it, and provide their comments. Sometimes the devil is in the details for example with line numbers, which may appear differently on the reviewer’s copy of a paper vs. that which the author(s) prepare.
Editors in their turn have to spend time in finding out which reviewer has focused most on which part of the manuscript in order to prepare a balanced decision letter and reviewers themselves often feel distanced from the outcome of the operation (and even if they do have the opportunity to view comments made by their peers, it is often unclear as to who has done what).
