"Summary: After 30 years of practicing peer review and 15 years of studying it experimentally, I’m unconvinced of its value. Its downside is much more obvious to me than its upside, and the evidence we have on peer review tends to support that jaundiced view. Yet peer review remains sacred, worshipped by scientists and central to the processes of science -- awarding grants, publishing, and dishing out prizes. It would be a bold funding body or journal that abandoned peer review, but could we at least do better? I want here to explore peer review -- from a rather personal point of view -- and ask questions about what would be the best system..." - Shirley Wu

This is disturbing but perhaps not surprising: "One way that we studied peer review at the BMJ was by inserting deliberate errors into short papers and then asking reviewers to review the papers without telling the that they contained the inserted errors.[10] These studies consistently showed that reviewers spotted only a minority of errors and that many reviewers spotted none." - Shirley Wu

Also very interesting: "The plan at that stage at the BMJ was to proceed to open up the whole process -- placing submitted papers online, asking reviewers to comment, and allow anybody, but particularly authors, to comment as the process proceeded. Peer review would thus be transformed from a black box to an open scientific discourse. This development hasn’t happened, and it seems to many an impossibly radical step. The main objection is that "low quality, possibly dangerous" material will be released. My response is that this happens already." - Shirley Wu

This kind of public peer review is already being practiced at a small number of journals - example at http://www.cosis.net/members... . A good description of this system is at http://www.nature.com/nature... . - Daniel Mietchen

Further quote from Smith: "I think that it would make much more sense simply to publish the paper -- on a university website or in an electronic journal with a low threshold -- with my comments and those of the other reviewer and let the world decide what it thinks." Yes. - Daniel Mietchen

thanks Shirley - I adapted your question for my cheminfo retrieval class to answer: http://getcheminfo.wikispaces.com/FAQ #17 - Jean-Claude Bradley

Very cool - your students will be way ahead of the curve in their knowledge of publishing, peer review, copyright, etc after that class! whew - Shirley Wu from twhirl

This is a class where the content will change significantly every year - Jean-Claude Bradley