Web‐based peer‐review systems are ubiquitous within scholarly publishing today, providing valuable efficiencies for authors, editors, and referees. These systems are the result of a general evolution from paper‐based workflows to electronic processes that began in the 1970s. DOS‐based systems paved the way for Windows desktop systems and, in the mid‐1990s, Web‐based peer review. Governmental, academic, and commercial stakeholders all participated in advancing the state of peer review by experimenting with different technologies, workflows, and features. These experiments have coalesced into a new steady state in which Web‐based peer‐review systems are the norm, and in which continued evolution tends to focus on incremental improvements to traditional workflow.