Advancing Peer Review in Futures Studies: A Practical Framework for Assessing Foresight Outputs

Evaluating foresight outputs remains one of the most underdeveloped areas in futures studies. Unlike established disciplines with mature peer-review traditions, foresight lacks widely accepted quality standards, leaving reviewers, editors, funders, and practitioners uncertain about how to separate rigorous work from speculation. This paper presents a practical, transferable assessment framework developed over decades of peer-review experience across various publications, including books, dissertations, journal articles, and applied projects. It presents concrete criteria organized around five core dimensions: methodological transparency, epistemological coherence, plausibility and evidence, ethical positioning, and impact orientation. Detailed checklists and decision trees guide reviewers through the particular challenges posed by monographs, doctoral theses, scholarly articles, and non-traditional outputs such as scenario reports, foresight briefs, and experiential futures artifacts. Special attention is given to emerging evaluators who must navigate interdisciplinary terrain and power asymmetries in review processes. By establishing a shared language and benchmarks, the paper aims to raise the overall quality threshold of the field while preserving the creative and pluralistic spirit that distinguishes futures studies.