Improving the peer review process: An examination of commonalities between scholarly societies and knowledge networks

Whilst peer review is the common form of scholarly refereeing, there are many differing aspects to this process. There is a view that the system is not without it's faults and this has given rise to increasing discussion and examination of the process as a whole. Since the importance of peer review is based on the primary way in which quality control is asserted within the academic world, the concern is what impact this is having on an ever increasing diversity of scholarship, in particular, within and between science and engineering disciplines. The peer review process as is commonly understood is increasingly considered as a conservative approach which is failing to adequately deal with the challenges of assessing interdisciplinary research, publications and outputs.