Peer review ‘works against’ early career researchers

Surely, a much more anonymous process that focuses on the idea proposed would help. The thought that one's career could be determined by a lottery is frightening. Despite the common perception that application successes are currently pretty random, a true system of chance would drive many out of the system with no relationship to their actual abilities. From many of us, a light touch scheme for modest amounts would enable us to build a research portfolio and remain highly research active. At present, even conference attendance can be challenging for those starting out making the essential networking more difficult.

As journals multiply alongside submitted papers to them, peer review, in so far as I have seen, is becoming weaker, determined by extraneous factors. While there is no substitute for direct evaluation of research papers by experts, any credible alternative (certainly not journal metrics) is also welcome. J.Tonannavar