CAMBRIDGE, MA (RPT) - In response to the growing peer review crisis, editors of academic journals have begun returning to what is called the ‘carrier pigeon model’ for peer review. “Peer review worked back when carrier pigeons were the main way we got manuscripts from authors and then sent them out to reviewers,” a prominent journal editor told RPT, “now that we’ve shifted back to the carrier pigeon model, we are finding that a lack of quality peer reviewers is no longer the limiting factor in the review process.”
“This solution kills two birds with one stone,” an associate editor at a mid-level journal said. “Not only is it solving the peer review problem, but now that we have gone back to requiring 3 hard copies of manuscripts from authors to be delivered by carrier pigeon, they’ve been writing much shorter papers because the pigeons can’t carry more than a few dozen pages. Did you see what I did there with the bird joke?”
Despite great enthusiasm for this solution from editors, others have expressed concerns that it will not address the underlying problem in the peer review process. “At least I don’t have to send my articles through an online portal to hell anymore,” a professor at research university told RPT, “but this solution is for the birds. Yesterday I got asked to review a paper via carrier pigeon and I couldn’t even read the title because it was covered in pigeon shit. Still better than some papers I’ve read, though.” Another professor at this same university commented, “This new policy really doesn’t address the crux of the peer review problem: As a reviewer, I am still not granted authorship for changing the direction and scope of someone else’s manuscript so that it deferentially cites my work and supports my own research agenda.”
