Peerage of Science: the inspiration, aims and future developments

Where did the inspiration for Peerage of Science come from? ‘Inspiration’ sounds something sudden, and personal. And that’s how it felt. It was beyond midnight, I was in bed, and there in the darkness it was all suddenly so clear. The three concepts that better peer review needs and how they tie to each other. I had to get up and start writing it up. I wrote all night, and the basic outline of Peerage of Science was ready for colleague comments by 6 am. Those colleagues became my co-founders later on. But of course that is not how ideas come to be, in reality. Ideas are never products of a single mind. Ideas do not spontaneously appear. They germinate unnoticed, in silence, in countless interactions with smart people, in happy events and, in particular, in disappointments. On the day before, our research group had a journal club meeting, which had a tradition of spiralling discussions into philosophy of science, sociology of science and ethics of science, regardless of the original topic. It was my turn to introduce something, and I had chosen a paper on peer review delay. Predictably, all the woes of peer review were soon on the table, not just delay. Amidst the furore, a comment “Someone should start an online service to fix this” was left echoing in my mind. Turns out communal ranting can be profoundly inspirational. I recall the questions I had. How do I know I did not fail? How do I know if I did well? Did my peer review matter? Four years before th...
Source: BioMed Central Blog - Category: Journals (General) Authors: Tags: Publishing BMC Series peer review quality of peer review Source Type: blogs