Remco Heesen (University of Cambridge), Liam Kofi Bright (Carnegie Mellon University)
Pre-publication peer review should be abolished. We consider the effects that such a change will have on the social structure of science, paying particular attention to the changed incentive structure and the likely effects on the behavior of individual scientists. We evaluate these changes from the perspective of epistemic consequentialism. We find that where the effects of abolishing pre-publication peer review can be evaluated with a reasonable level of confidence based on presently available evidence, they are either positive or neutral. We conclude that on present evidence abolishing peer review weakly dominates the status quo.
