Peerage of Science: will it work?

Peer review is the most widely used selection process for evaluating submissions of scientific publications, and yet this system is widely criticized. As an editor of The Lancet points out: ‘…we know that the system of peer review is biased, unjust, unaccountable, incomplete, easily fixed, often insulting, usually ignorant, occasionally foolish, and frequently wrong’ [1]. On November 1, 2011, a new service was launched, called ‘Peerage of Science’ (PoS; http://www.peerageofscience.org), which aims to ‘fix the woes of peer review without breaking what works’.