Fish stocks, grazing land, and reviewers: exploring the usefulness of the tragedy of the commons for understanding the reviewer resource problem

Stafford’s article presents the problem of finding reviewers in terms of the “Tragedy of the Commons”. Whilst recognising the very real scale of the reviewer problem, in this piece I suggest that focussing on the metaphor of the commons overlooks key assumptions in this work and risks distracting us from more solvable aspects of the reviewer problem. These include increasing the supply of capable reviewers (i.e. the commons is not necessarily as fixed as is the case for fish stocks and grazing land) and more proactive editorial screening (to avoid overusing reviewer resources).