What is Peer Review? An Explainer

" ... Defenders of the peer review system say although there are flaws, we’re yet to find a better system to evaluate research. However, a number of innovations have been introduced in the academic review system to improve its objectivity and efficiency. Some new open-access journals (such as PLOS One) publish papers with very little evaluation (they check the work is not deeply flawed methodologically). The focus there is on the post-publication peer review system: all readers can comment and criticize the paper. Some journals such as Nature, have made part of the review process public (“open” review), offering a hybrid system in which peer review plays a role of primary gate keepers, but the public community of scholars judge in parallel (or afterwards in some other journals) the value of the research. Another idea is to have a set of reviewers rating the paper each time it is revised. In this case, authors will be able to choose whether they want to invest more time in a revision to obtain a better rating, and get their work publicly recognized ..."