Academic Social Network Hopes to Change the Culture of Peer Review - Jeffrey R. Young, Chronicle of Higher Ed

An academic social network has added a tool it hopes will shake up the system of peer review. The network is called Academia.edu, and it has grown to more than 25 million registered participants, who use it mainly to post their published papers in order to help others find them (and, it’s hoped, cite them). The site’s new tool, called Sessions, lets researchers post papers that are still in progress, and invite colleagues to comment on them so the papers can be improved before being submitted to peer-reviewed journals. Richard Price, chief executive of Academia.edu, says the intention is to recreate online what happens at academic conferences, where scholars present new research and face questions and critiques from peers in the field. http://chronicle.com/blogs/wiredcampus/academic-social-network-hopes-to-change-the-culture-of-peer-review/57419