Understanding the sustainability of supply–demand in peer review system: an analysis based on scholars’ research and review activities

The peer review system’s supply–demand is critical for the sustainability of the entire scientific ecosystem, but is rarely explored. This paper proposes an angle on understanding the supply–demand of the system. From this perspective, we investigate the empirical relationship between scholars’ research and review activities, to uncover the micro mechanism behind the peer review system’s supply–demand, and provide strategies for sustaining the system. A comprehensive dataset is developed by integrating three databases, the OpenAlex (bibliometric database), ORCID (author identification database), and Publons (peer review records database), allowing us to explore the dynamic interactions between scholars’ research and review activities. In total, the review and bibliometric data of 179,737 scholars worldwide across all disciplines are obtained. Through the fixed effect models, it is observed that, when scholars’ research activities increase, there is also an increased tendency on their review activities. This positive effect indicates the self-organization nature of the peer review system’s supply–demand, which plays an important role in maintaining the sustainability of the system. Other analyses show that scientific collaboration, funding, and interdisciplinarity can improve the above effect; the gender of scholars also have heterogeneities. These findings bring policy implications, which contribute to achieving a sustainable functioning of the overall scientific communication ecosystem.