9 Months Is A Long Time To Wait For Science News : Shots - Health News : NPR

"The technology that drives science forward is forever accelerating, but the same can't be said for science communication. The basic process still holds many vestiges from its early days — that is the 17th century. Some scientists are pressing to change that critical part of the scientific enterprise. Here's what they're confronting: When researchers studying the biology of disease make a discovery, it typically takes nine months for them to get their results published in a journal. One reason for that delay is it goes through a process of peer review that is both necessary and antiquated. The fate of that paper rests on just two or three scientists who have been asked to review it and decide whether it's worthy of being published....

One way forward is to encourage scientists to make their work publicly available on the Internet before it has been peer-reviewed or accepted in a journal. Biologists are starting to do that, using a preprint server called bioRxiv. Physicists have been doing this for years. Peer review can come later, Eisen says. In fact, he's putting together a system that will facilitate that, and it's set to debut this summer. "What we want to see happen next is to allow the scientists who are reading papers [as part of their normal work] ... to review them," he says.

As he envisions it, "you post a work, people comment on it, you update it, and if it gets better through that process, that's great — now you've produced something good," he says. "If, through the process of review and assessment, you and the community realize the work wasn't right, it just sorts of fades and you mark it as such. And I think we'll all be better off if that happens."..."