Select Crowd Review: A New, Innovative Review Process for the International Journal of Sports Medicine

The quality of scientific articles is traditionally assured by the peer-review process. The IJSM uses double-blind peer review, in which the authors’ and reviewers’ identities are kept anonymous. Peer review is a core element of scientific publishing and one of the most important issues in today's research climate is to deliver a rapid publishing process without compromising quality or integrity.

However, the whole peer-review process until a final decision is made is often not timely. Each year the number of scientific papers submitted continues to grow, which puts increasing pressure on the system. For the single reviewer this is resulting in an overload of requests to prepare further reviews. Moreover, medicine and natural sciences are subject to increasingly narrow specialization. This limits the number of potential reviewers who are qualified and willing to evaluate a manuscript in its entirety. This situation invites us to look for alternative systems, models and solutions for the quality assurance and sustained efficiency of scientific publications.