Peer review is a finite resource. Every time we accept an invitation to review, we are deciding where a few hours of unpaid expert labour will go. Most of us rarely think about that decision. We review for the journals that ask us, and the journals that ask us most often tend to be large commercial outlets.
A new initiative asks researchers to be more deliberate. The Diamond Reviewer Pledge (https://forrt.org/diamond-reviewer/) invites researchers to commit to reviewing at least one article in the next 12 months for a diamond open access journal. A diamond journal charges nothing to publish and nothing to read. It is run by and for the scholarly community, often by volunteers.
The pledge asks for very little. It does not ask you to stop reviewing for commercial journals. It does not ask you to review more than you already do. It asks you to make sure that at least one of your reviews each year goes to a journal that keeps research open to everyone. Signing takes about a minute. You give your name and affiliation, and you can add an ORCID iD if you like. Email addresses are not published, and you can choose to be listed anonymously.
The initiative is led by Steven Verheyen (Erasmus University Rotterdam) and Lukas Röseler (Münster Center for Open Science), with support from FORRT, MüCOS, and the Expertise Centre Diamond Open Access. It launched during this year’s Peer Review Week (September 14–18), which focused on capacity: how the research community can handle rising submissions while its pool of reviewers is under pressure. That pressure is felt most by diamond journals. They have no budget to pay for editorial support, so they depend on reviewers who respond promptly and do the work well.
Readers of The Replication Network will know the problem well. Many of the outlets that publish replications and comments are small, community-run journals. [The Journal of Comments and Replications in Economics is one of them.] Their editors often have to send out a large number of invitations before a single reviewer agrees. A modest, predictable supply of willing reviewers would make a real difference to them.
If you are not sure where to find diamond journals in your field, the pledge website lists several resources. These include the Diamond Discovery Hub, the Directory of Open Access Journals (filter for journals “without fees”), the Free Journal Network, and OpenAlex. Reviews for Peer Community In also count toward the pledge.
So the next time a review invitation arrives from a diamond journal, consider saying yes. Better still, sign the pledge first. You can learn more and join at https://forrt.org/diamond-reviewer/.
