New Identities in Peer Review: Who Are They and Why Are They Important?

Abstract

Exalted by some people and criticized by others, since the peer review system has been implemented in scholarly journals it has transformed into an effective tool to select manuscripts of scientific merit for publication. Henry Oldenburg, the first Secretary of the Royal Society and creator of the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society (founded 1665), was one of the pioneers in implementing peer review in scientific journals. He started the peer-review system in Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society by inviting 3 members of the Royal Society “who had more knowledge of the matters in question than he, to comment on submissions prior to making the decision about whether to publish.”1 At that time, the development of the peer-review system was linked to the concerns of scientists as science producers and consumers.2 As science producers, they wanted to have their work recognized by publishing in spaces valued by other members of the scientific community. As science consumers, they wanted to make sure that the studies elaborated by other scientists were evaluated with competence.2 The decisions taken by Oldenburg and the Council of the Royal Society to evaluate the quality of the content published in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society constituted the foundations of peer review.2 Throughout the history of scholarly publishing, the peer-review process has typically been done by a small community of peers. These peers are defined in literature as “experienced researchers”3 and selected by the editors based on criteria such as academic seniority, academic degree, involvement […]