Evolution or Revolution: Changes in Peer Review

Adrian Mulligan
Deputy Director, Research and Academic Relations, Elsevier

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Peer review has been the cornerstone of scholarly publishing for hundreds of years, but how important is peer review to the research community today? What function does peer review serve and how well does it deliver? With the surge in papers from developing countries, are reviewers from some countries bearing an undue burden? There have been a number of developments in peer review in recent years, some would ascribe them as radical changes, what has been the reaction of the research community to these initiatives? Drawing upon the results of studies that examine the attitudes of over 4,000 active researchers, we are able to provide insight on many of these issues and identify what may happen going forward.