Listen to this article:
Over the last decade there has been some much-needed innovation to the antiquated process of lengthy peer review and journal publication. Papers can now be published online before peer review, the peer review process itself is evolving, and attempts are being made to disseminate results in formats other than the often unwieldy and intimidating scientific paper.
Traditionally during peer-review, academic experts in the relevant field of research are asked to read through another researchers’ papers, request additional experiments, and make judgements about whether the paper should be published in a specific journal. Whilst theoretically this peer review is rigorous and should prevent publication of spurious results, there is a growing dissatisfaction with various aspects of the system. In particular, peer review often involves multiple rounds of back-and-forth communication and may result in requests for further experiments. Together, this can lead to a delay of several months or even years before the research findings are published and circulated to the wider scientific field. This delay is detrimental to the pace of scientific discovery, much of which is cumulative and therefore built on the publications of colleagues and other researchers.
…To read the full article, head over to Issue 31: Science in the 22nd Century
Written by Louisa Drake (she/her), who is just finishing up her Neuroscience PhD where she looked at the regeneration of the spinal cord in zebrafish larvae.
