Rethinking Peer Review
For generations, peer review has been the backbone of academic publishing. It's the mechanism that decides which ideas are “worthy” of print. Most of us who left academia have lived inside that system. We would wait for months to get a referee report, navigating opaque verdicts, and often wondering whether the process truly served discovery or merely tradition.
In a recent British Journal for the Philosophy of Science article, Remco Heesen and Liam Kofi Bright offer a provocative answer. Their paper, “Is Peer Review a Good Idea?”, argues that pre-publication peer review should be abolished and replaced by a model where researchers publish first, then review. It’s not an act of rebellion for rebellion’s sake; rather, it’s a philosophical and empirical argument that the current system no longer optimizes for the thing science most cares about: the production of reliable knowledge.
What’s wrong with the system we inherited?
Pre-publication review was designed to ensure quality control. In practice, it’s slow, inconsistent, and biased toward the safe and familiar. Reviewers disagree wildly; editors often act as bottlenecks; and career incentives push researchers to please anonymous judges rather than pursue ambitious ideas. Worse still, potentially valuable work languishes unseen while the review process drags on.
Heesen and Bright approach this not as cynics but as social epistemologists—thinkers who study how institutions shape knowledge. Their conclusion is that the evidence for pre-publication review’s effectiveness is surprisingly weak. It doesn’t reliably detect error or fraud, and it delays the collective process of scientific learning.
A new model: publish, then review
Instead of defending an institution that grew up in the age of the printing press, the authors invite us to imagine something better suited to the digital age. Under a publish-then-review system, researchers would make their work publicly available immediately—through repositories or preprint servers—and invite post-publication evaluation. Reviews, replications, endorsements, and criticisms would happen out in the open, rather than behind editorial doors.
This flips the epistemic order: rather than knowledge being filtered before it enters the public sphere, it’s tested and refined through open dialogue. In Heesen and Bright’s terms, this alternative “weakly dominates” the current system—it’s at least as good, and potentially much better, for the long-term progress of science.
Beyond the journal gate
Of course, open review comes with challenges. Without traditional gatekeeping, how do we prevent information overload? How do we ensure early-career researchers are heard alongside established voices? And in high-stakes areas like medicine or climate science, how do we balance openness with responsibility?
But these are problems of design, not destiny. Overlay journals, transparent referee reports, and curated recommendation systems already show what’s possible. The key is to treat peer review as an evolving technology, not a sacred ritual.
Our takeaway
For those of us working at the intersection of science and philosophy, this conversation matters deeply. The structures that shape how ideas circulate also shape which ideas survive. If our goal is to build a more collaborative, creative, and self-correcting knowledge ecosystem, then the call to rethink peer review isn’t radical—it’s overdue.
