Who Killed the PrePrint, and Could It Make a Return? | Guest Blog, Scientific American Blog Network

It was 1859 and “On the Origin of Species” was published by Charles Darwin. Within 10 years, a new journal arose with the simple name of “Nature” and with the ambition to be a liberal publication that went against the grain in its scientific views and editorial model. And just like Darwin’s crowning publication, it was not regularly peer-reviewed; at least not in the beginning.  From the start, science was actually communicated much more rapidly than is commonly the case today. The “journal des Scavans” first published in 1665 is considered to be the first academic journal in Europe, predating even the Royal Society’s first journal. It was not peer-reviewed. The goal at the time was to communicate results as quickly as possible, rather than vouch for their accuracy. Furthermore, when the Royal Society of Edinburgh started testing peer review it never claimed that the science was any more valid. The weight of responsibility for the research integrity was placed squarely on the shoulders of the authors and no one else and because of this, results could be sent out into the world without the lengthy process of peer review that equivalent results sometimes experience today.  Experiments with peer review continued throughout the centuries, but it was not until decades into the 20th century that peer review became more standardized. Still, many journals had a rather ad hoc process to peer review (if at all), prior to the 1970s. Famously, Watson and Crick’s double-helix paper from 1953 in Nature was never peer-reviewed. And Nature did not routinely practice peer review until 1967. This suggests that science was able to progress quite well for centuries despite the lack of a rigorous vetting system prior to communicating research.  Today, as an academic community, we absolutely recognize the value of peer review, or what might also be called “pre-publication review.” Many of us have sat on both sides of the author-reviewer table and will freely admit that manuscripts going through pre-publication review are usually improved upon and probably even advance ourselves as scientists, not just writers of science. That said, one has to wonder whatever happened to the 'preprints' that were common up through the Victorian era. Was there any value at all in that system? And if so, why is it not more common today? ..."