As I keep saying, peer review is a pretty new thing, and it doesn’t have to be the way it is now.

Thank you to the Royal Society, this will be an ✨amazing✨scholarly resource!!

“The initial process was much more informal than the one scientists know today, which became formalized in the 1970s … the Royal Society was asking reviewers to respond to standardized questions, (which) could prompt brief responses even to significant pieces of work.”

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-024-03287-4

The early days of peer review: five insights from historical reports

A crop of referee reports from the Royal Society’s archive reveal discussions about cutting printing costs, reviewer holidays and even editing images.