In “A Multi-disciplinary Perspective on Emergent and Future Innovations in Peer Review,” Jonathan P. Tennant and a large group of co-authors consider the past, present, and future of peer review in scholarly communication. They suggest that although academic publishing is largely done online, peer review methods broadly have yet to catch up to the possibilities that our networked world hold. Tennant et al. argue that resistance to reforming peer review for the modern age is “largely a hangover from the commercial age of publishing, and now seems superfluous and discordant with any modern Web-based model of scholarly communication” (8). The authors go on to survey many potential models for peer review, including following the norms of sites like Reddit, Github, and Wikipedia. In conclusion, Tennant et al. quip: “If the current system of peer review were to undergo peer review, it would undoubtedly achieve a ‘revise and resubmit’ decision” (33). For the authors, the potential to revolutionize peer review to be more contemporary, and more open, is vast; it is cultural inertia that is holding new forms of peer review back.

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