It’s the fourth of February 2026. Today I received my third request to provide peer review so far this year. All three requests have been from journals I’ve never written or reviewed for before. (I’m not counting the request to re-review a revised paper from last year.)

This wouldn’t be entirely surprising if it weren’t for the fact that I’ve been formally out of academia for two and half years, and in practice for something closer to three years.

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Part of me wants to read this as a positive development: perhaps my academic reputation has grown long in my absence, like a shadow at sundown, and my insights on the theory and practice of creative foresight methods have become lauded and much in demand!

*checks G**gle Scholar*

Nope, doesn’t look like it; the arc of my obscurity seems still to be bending elegantly toward the justice of asymptote.

(Though I should note that these are all legit invites from real journals, and papers that look plausibly related to my expertise and interests. The tide of spam requests to present conference papers on advanced scientific topics way outside my domain of expertise, at venues which I uncharitably assume will turn out to be broom-cupboards in airport hotels, are another question entirely.)

That leaves the more structural hypothesis, which has two variants. The more positive version: exhaustion or principles—or some blend of the two—is leading colleagues still within the ivory tower to decline reviews more often than before, meaning that editors are scraping the barrel and pinging extraneous weirdos-in-exile like yours truly instead.

The more depressing possibility is that the tsunami of slop research is pushing its relentless way up the beach, and everyone’s drowning.

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I have replied to all three of them in the same way, namely to ask the standard turnover time. I got a shock a few times last year after agreeing to review, and then being given a mere fortnight in which to do so—a turnover I would have balked at even when I still had a seat in the sacred grove.

Nowadays I say that I’m happy to do it but, given the work is uncompensated, I need to fit that full day (at minimum) of unpaid work around the schedule of stuff that helps me pay my rent; therefore I want a two month horizon on submitting my review.

The first two requests were both withdrawn in light of that stipulation. I wonder if I’ll get a hat trick.