Peer Review quo vadis? Imagining Peer Review for an interdisciplinary future  

Peer review is the established practice to ensure scientific standards. Scientists from the same discipline are considered to be peers; they assess each other’s research results and research projects before they are published or implemented. But this process has its pitfalls, which are increasingly being discussed in a variety of contexts.

After the fragmentation of science into numerous disciplines and sub-disciplines over the last two to three hundred years, our world is now more interconnected than ever – which is visible in the countless interdisciplinary research fields that are currently emerging. But what does peer review look like in such an interdisciplinary world? How do we create a discourse of science in which disciplines can understand each other, exchange ideas and develop common research styles despite their respective jargons?

At this event, we discuss know how peer review is handled in the different scientific disciplines and to what extent interdisciplinary review procedures are also conceivable and desirable.

•  Where are the main differences and where are the strengths and weaknesses of the established peer review procedures? What innovative approaches are there?
• When is the extradisciplinary view also illuminating and enriching? When is it disturbing and confusing?
• How elastic is the term ‚peer‘? Does peer review need to be revolutionised to accommodate an interdisciplinary future, or could interdisciplinary review processes be subsumed under an additional, new term?

This panel discussion is hosted by Berlin Exchange. Berlin Exchange is a student journal network founded by the journals anwesenheitsnotiz, Berlin Exchange Medicine and PolisReflects. Together, we aim to make Open Access publishing interdisciplinary, student-centred and innovative, to encourage students to engage with research at an early age, and to provide them with the platform and resources they need to become critical actors in the scientific process.