Limited online training opportunities exist for scholarly peer reviewers

To create a comprehensive list of all openly available online trainings in scholarly peer review and to analyze their characteristics.

A systematic review of online training material in scholarly peer review openly accessible between 2012 and 2022. Training characteristics were presented in evidence tables and summarized narratively. A risk of bias tool was purpose-built for this study to evaluate the included training material as evidence-based.

Fourty-two training opportunities in manuscript peer review were identified, of which only twenty were openly accessible. Most were online modules (n = 12, 60%) with an estimated completion time of less than 1 hour (n = 13, 65%). Using our ad hoc risk of bias tool, four sources (20%) met our criteria of evidence-based.

Our comprehensive search of the literature identified 20 openly accessible online training materials in manuscript peer review. For such a crucial step in the dissemination of literature, a lack of training could potentially explain disparities in the quality of scholarly publishing.