“How many rounds is enough?” A duoethnographic study of emotion, repositioning, and agency in academic peer review

Peer review is commonly understood as a mechanism for scholarly quality assurance, yet less is known about how prolonged and recursive review processes are experienced and how such experiences may shape scholarly agency and development. This duoethnographic study examined how two differently positioned co-authors experienced six rounds of peer review and how their interpretations shaped subsequent choice and action. Drawing on cultural-historical activity theory (CHAT) and Vygotsky’s concept of perezhivanie, we used abductive thematic analysis to analyse multiple data sources generated over six months, including reflective journals, meeting records, digital communications, editorial correspondence, and manuscript revision histories. The findings showed that the same editorial conditions acquired different psychological significance in relation to the authors’ publishing experiences, expectations, and scholarly positions. Social interactions provided mediational resources through which these interpretations were reconsidered, contributing to a shift from continued accommodation towards intentional boundary-setting. The discontinuation of the original publication activity also contributed to the emergence of a related scholarly activity in which the peer-review experience became a new object of inquiry. We conceptualise this process of generating a related activity from the experiences and resources accumulated in the original activity as generative agency, highlighting how developmental trajectories may extend beyond an existing activity through the formation of alternative objects and pathways for action. The findings offer implications for cultural-historical understandings of agency and for mentoring and supporting researchers navigating complex scholarly environments.