Real peer review has never been tried - Works in Progress

Outdated forms of peer review create bottlenecks that slow science. But in a world where research can now circulate rapidly on the Internet, we need to develop new ways to do science in public.

For most of the twentieth century, science looked very different from the way it does today. For one, the internet did not exist. If researchers wanted to share their work with one another, they would meet in person – at conferences and seminars – or circulate their work through print – in letters, books, or journals. But journals, too, worked very differently. Few studies went through ‘peer review’, the procedure where, after a scientist submits their paper to a journal, the editor sends it out to other scientists, who provide feedback and recommend whether the paper should be published. The

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