> Before the adoption of peer review, journals focused on quickly disseminating letters and communications between scientists, with little to no editing or exte

> Before the adoption of peer review, journals focused on quickly disseminating letters and communications between scientists, with little to no editing or external reviewing It seems to me that a return to this standard is inevitable: * Scientific papers are in enormously difficult to peer review properly because fields have become so specialized * The incentive structure is highly unbalanced, and the truth is, the people you’d like to peer review your papers are already too busy * Peer review is very expensive (in terms of time) for a conscientious reviewer * Many of these papers are low quality, serving to buttress the reputation of the author more than moving the field forward Since it’s an open secret that so many journals are worthless, it would probably be better just to return to the publish fast model instead of trying to fix a sick endeavor.