[[{“value”:”By the 1950s, the Royal Society was asking reviewers to respond to standardized questions, including whether a study contained “contributions to knowledge of sufficient scientific interest” and simply whether the society should publish it. These questions could prompt brief responses even to significant pieces of work. Chemist Dorothy Hodgkin wrote barely 50 words when asked to review
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By the 1950s, the Royal Society was asking reviewers to respond to standardized questions, including whether a study contained “contributions to knowledge of sufficient scientific interest” and simply whether the society should publish it.
These questions could prompt brief responses even to significant pieces of work. Chemist Dorothy Hodgkin wrote barely 50 words when asked to review the full manuscript of the structure of DNA by Francis Crick and James Watson in 1953, which was published in Proceedings of the Royal Society in April 19541. (A shorter paper announcing the discovery had already appeared in Nature2.)
In her sole comment, beyond a series of yes and no answers, Hodgkin suggests the duo should “touch up” photographs to eliminate distracting reflections of “chairs in the perspex rod” — a technical fix that modern cameras perform routinely. Crick and Watson seemed to follow the advice.
The archive is also littered with long reports, many in handwritten scrawl. In 1877, reviewer Robert Clifton finished a 24-page report on two related papers on optics, with an apology: “How you will hate me for bothering you with this tremendously long letter, but I hope before we meet time will have softened your anger.”
Ferlier says that the introduction of the standardized referee questions significantly reduced the amount of time and effort put in by reviewers. “There’s really this understanding in the nineteenth century and very early twentieth century that the peer review is a real discussion,” she says. “After that, it becomes a way of managing the influx of papers for the journal.”
The article, by David Adam in Nature, is interesting throughout. Via Mike Rosenwald.
The post The early history of peer review appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.
History, Science
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