JoVE BLOG | JoVE

Why Strong Results are No Longer Enough in Modern Peer Review

Written by Ellen Ovenden | Mar 30, 2026 9:00:32 PM

Today, a promising result is only part of what reviewers are looking for. They also want to know whether the work is transparent enough to evaluate and clear enough to reproduce.

In a 2025 study, journals without a code-sharing policy showed 8.1 times lower reproducibility potential than otherwise similar journals with code-sharing requirements.1 This helps explain why reviewers now look more closely at method detail, reporting rigor, and how easily a study can be checked and reused.