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Types of Peer Review

Peer review is a critical component of advancing research. Peer review can be done on many different research outputs, including:

Peer review can be formal or informal and ideally occurs at different levels throughout a project. When most people think of peer review they think of this in the context of reviewing a journal article. Journal articles, as opposed to preprints, have gone through the peer review process- the paper has been peer reviewed and modified by the author in response to the reviewer’s suggestions, so these papers are seen to have added value. However, there are also initiatives to peer review preprints, for example, Peer Community In arranges reviews for manuscripts. You can read more about preprints in the Open Access chapter.

Levels of Peer Review

We see peer review as an important exercise in collaboration not limited to a quality-safeguard procedure. However, in current research practice, peer review often appears as a hurdle everyone needs to pass through.