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Peer review can be a confusing process at times, so to help cut out all the jargon and make it as simple as possible, we have developed the ‘Peer Review Experts’ blog series. We’ll be bringing you top tips on a wide range of peer review subjects, straight from the experts; our very own peer-review team at F1000Research. This week, Yousuf Al-Mousawi, Senior Editorial Assistant, gives us a potted history of peer review and our place within it.

Peer review is the cornerstone of academic publishing and as such all actors (authors, reviewers, editors, publishers, readers) are keen to keep innovating to make peer review more robust. Indeed, one of the things that we are most proud of here at F1000Research is writing our own chapter in the long history of peer review, by launching our pioneering model of post-publication open peer review in 2013. We believe that transparency is the indicator of true quality, accountability and trustworthiness and offers numerous advantages to not only the authors but also to reviewers and society. And whilst we are not too proud to admit that our open peer review model has been met with some uncertainty in the past, we have been heartily encouraged by the growing movement and acceptance towards this truly open method of publishing.

The evolution of peer review

To truly understand and appreciate just how far we have come in terms of the evolution of peer review, I think it’s important to take a moment to look back over this continuously changing and developing process in science publishing.

But before we delve into the history of peer review, I would just like to emphasise that the term itself only dates back to 1969 or 1971 (according to the Merriam-Webster and The Oxford English dictionary respectively). Also, the term ‘ref­eree’ was introduced in 1817 by George Greenough – a geologist who knew this term as a law student earlier in his life. Therefore, in the following discussion, the mention of either of these terms does not mean that they were necessarily recognised in their current sense within the historical context mentioned here.

Historians of science trace the concept (and not the actual process) of peer review, as a method of evaluating written work to ancient Greece (5^th Century BC) or Middle-Eastern scholars (circa 900 AD). In one influential such account, it is suggested that “the first documented description of a peer-review process” is probably in a book called “Ethics of the Physician”, by a Syrian author, which states that:

“It is the duty of a visiting physician to make duplicate notes of the condition of the patient on each visit…The notes of the physician were examined by a local council of physicians, who would adjudicate as to whether the physician had performed according to the standards that then prevailed.”

More commonly, and popularly, this history dates back to about 350 years ago with the claim that “The first record of an editorial pre-publication peer-review” goes back to 1665 and is ascribed to Henry Oldenburg, the first editor of the “Philosophical Transactions” of the London Royal Society. It should be noted that Oldenburg, then, used his own personal judgement, as an editor, in the selection process without resorting to external opinion; he used no referee system.

In other accounts, the first peer-reviewed publication is considered to be the “Medical Essays and Observations” published by the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 1731. The society adhered to the following peer-review process:

“Memoirs sent by correspondence are distributed according to the subject matter to those members who are most versed in these matters. The report of their identity is not known to the author.”

Note here that “members” are not necessarily “external” referees; they are members of the society itself.

The Royal Society of London started in 1752 to follow a similar procedure by forming a “Committee on Papers”. The function of this committee was to review abstracts of manuscripts and “vote by secret ballot without discussion” on what to publish in the “Transactions”. In the 1760s, the French Académie Royale des Sciences also appointed small committees of “rapporteurs” to evaluate submission (inventions and discoveries) by outsiders. The reporters, however, used written and jointly-authored reports rather than votes – making the process more akin to peer review or refereeing.

The beginnings of peer review as we know it now

There seems to be a consensus among historians of science that the practice of evaluating manuscripts prior to publication (what we now recognise as traditional peer review; then called “refereeing”) emerged mainly within scholarly Societies in the early nineteenth century. For example, from 1832 the Royal Society started to seek independently written referees’ reports to ensure that more expertise informed the Committee of Papers in its editorial decision-making. This process was based on a suggestion that was initially made by William Whewell in 1831 and this is why some historians of science consider him the inventor of peer review. The Royal Society itself seems to consider 1832 as the date for the invention of refereeing.

Thereafter, refereeing was quickly adopted by other societies such as the Geological Society and the Linnaean Society and became a normal part of their publication process. It was also adopted by independent journals in the late nineteenth century. For example, in 1893, the British Medical Journal adopted the practice of assessing submitted manuscripts using external referees, labelled by the editor as “experts having knowledge and being recognised authorities” in the subject matter of the relevant manuscript.

Despite the above developments, it is important to note that adoption of the refereeing or peer review practice was slow and haphazard. This can be illustrated by the famous story of “Albert Einstein” and “The Physical Review” in 1936. Einstein was surprised and “incredibly offended” that his manuscript was sent out to be refereed. He withdrew the manuscript protesting that he had not authorised the editor to do so. Einstein’s other papers were published in the “Physical Review” without refereeing. He had previously published in a German journal where editors evaluated and chose papers themselves. This story suggests that:

“…in 1936 refereeing was not a universal practice at the world’s top scientific journals. It was not even a universal practice at Physical Review…”

The modern peer review process was established in its current form after the 2^nd World War when a gradual and steady increase in scientific research, specialisation of articles and competition for journal space occurred. Then it gradually started to spread widely, though not in an orderly fashion, around the middle of the 20^th century. Journals such as “Science” and “The Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA)” started to use outside referees in the 1950s and 1960s. For “Nature”, external refereeing becomes a requirement for publication in 1973. “The Lancet” introduced peer-review in 1976. By the middle of the 1990s, peer review became largely commonplace.

Technology and peer review

The dawn of the modern age came with many advancements, most notably with the rise of the internet which introduced a new way to disseminate information quicker than ever before.  Peer review was no exception to these advancements, internet publishing started in the 1990s and triggered a peer review revolution!

Following this, perhaps the next biggest innovation in peer review is the growing adoption of ‘open peer review’. The “openness” here refers to several traits or characteristics of peer review such as open identities, reports, pre-review manuscripts, and final-version comments. To mention a few examples, BioMed Central, Frontiers, PeerJ and of course F1000Research, are among several publishers who have adopted different and innovative aspects of open peer review since their conception.

Between 2007–11, many academic journals such as BMJ, BMC, EMBO Journal, the Frontiers series, Royal Society Open Science, and Nature Communications employ versions of ‘open peer review’ by publishing reviewers’ names or notes alongside papers.

The future is open

Looking ahead, I believe the focus on transparency in peer review will gain even more momentum and will soon become the ‘norm’. Innovations will be contingent on what technology is available, but in the end, I believe the biggest hurdle we still need to overcome is a cultural one. There is still a lot of resistance from a small proportion of the research community towards transparency, and it will naturally take time to alleviate their fears around a fully transparent process. Ultimately, the proof is undoubtedly in the pudding, and in the meantime here at F1000Research, we will continue to do all we can to champion and demonstrate the benefits of transparency in peer review.

If you’re interested in hearing more from our peer review experts, check out our other blogs in this series.