A grand thank you to reviewers 2024–2025 – and an overview of 36(4)

The world of academic journal publishing is huge.Tens of thousands of academic journals are published by massive companies, while other companies literally make billions of pounds or dollars of revenue in analysing and publicising data, useful, e.g. for ranking journals or assessing markets (Cahill 2024; Macdonald 2025).And all that activity is totally dependent on an almost unseen core.Just like the spike on a spinning top, the peer reviewersa most unpaid and unseen groupare essential for academic journal publishing.Academic journals are wholly dependent on this most important and thinnest element in the process of publishing scholarly research and analysis.Peer or academic reviewers are experts in the fields in which an academic journal publishes.They are also largely invisible.Most journals practice the process of 'doubleblind peer review'.When an article is submitted to a journal, decisions are made first to accept it for review or 'desk-reject' it, that is, reject it before it is sent out for review.In this journal (ELRR), articles that are approved to go forward in the review process are then put in the hands of an Associate Editoranother wonderful scholarwho will choose reviewers and collate and interpret reviews, following the article right along the review process.In a 'double-blind peer review', the reviewers do not know the authors, and the authors never know the reviewers (although some may try to guess).Double-blind peer review is essential for rigorous review of scholarly or policy research.Reviewers are not swayed by an author's name, or institution, or reputation, and so must assess articles on their own merit.It almost always works.Certainly, there are few, if any, alternatives.Without peer review, academic journals would not be academic, and claims to scholarship would be just thatclaims.Thus, despite the doubters