Before the law: open access, quality control, and the future of peer review

Use the link to access the full text article from Debating Open Access published by the British Academy.  A summary of key points reads as follows:  "[1]  OA is not about abandoning peer review but it does provide the opportunity to rethink its role and our methods.  [2] 67% of existing OA journals do not charge APCs and yet academics have tended to steer clear of them.  [3] People opt for recognised outlets because of the (erroneously) perceived emphasis on publication venue by accreditation structures such as RAE/REF/tenure. [4] In the print world peer review was historically linked to page limits; these do not apply in the electronic realm. [5]  Double blind review is a misnomer and even then preserved anonymity can be problematic. [6] The alternative is to publish everything that meets a certain threshold of academic soundness and to let readers decide what should last; in effect a kind of post-publication, or peer-to-peer, review. [7] This modification of peer review could lead to more collaboration and less insistence on an individual finished product."