A scientist can spend several months, in many cases even years, strenuously investigating a single research question, with the ultimate goal of making a contribution—little or big—to the progress of human knowledge.

Succeeding in this hard task requires specialized, years-long training, intuition, creativity, in-depth knowledge of current and past theories and, most of all— lots of perseverance.

As a member of the scientific community, I can say that, sometimes, finding an interesting and novel result is just as hard as convincing your colleagues that your work actually is novel and interesting. That is, the work would deserve publication in a scientific journal.

But, prior to publication, any investigation must pass the screening of the “peer review.” This is a critical part of the process—only after peer review can a work be considered part of the scientific literature. And only peer-reviewed work will be counted during hiring and evaluation, as a valuable unit of work.

What are the implications of the current publication system—based on peer review—on the progress of science at a time when competition among scientists is rising?