I intend to present ideas (mostly not my own) about how to improve the current peer review system. This is a background post.

What is the purpose of peer review of scholarly publications?

• Certification of correctness of the work
• Filtering out work of low interest to the research community, to allocate attention more efficiently
• Improving the quality of the work

Michael Eisen (among others) has argued that the current system is broken. Michael Nielsen debunks three  myths about scientific  peer review. Daniel Lemire has several interesting posts, including: the perils of filter-then-publish, peer review is an honor-based system.

Certification is still important, and very discipline-specific. In (parts of?) physics it seems to be a fairly low standard: not obviously wrong. The journal PLoSOne seems to check more rigorously for correctness, but is very relaxed on significance (see here). Mathematics journals I have experience with seem to be more finicky, and traditional journals with a high reputation are much tougher in assessing significance, often rejecting without looking at the technical details.

It seems clear to me that improvements in the current system are sorely needed. Excessive attention to whether work is “interesting” risks reducing science to a popularity contest, and there are too many boring but correct papers to read. Who has time to help others improve their work, if refereeing is anonymous and there is so much pressure to publish yourself?