Effect of Peer Review on Citations in the Open Access Environment (Report‪)‬

Introduction Editorial peer review is widely used to select submissions to journals for publication and is presumed to improve their usefulness (Jefferson, Alderson, Wager & Davidoff, 2002). Publishing a peer reviewed article in a prestigious journal remains the highest validation for a work of scholarship. Peer review has served scholars well for centuries. The concept of reporting and validating research findings began in 1665, with the foundation of the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London. Peer review has enhanced the rigour and relevance of many scientific breakthroughs (Banks, 2006). Practically no historical accounts of the evolution of peer review exist. Contrary to common assumption, editorial peer review did not grow out of or interact with grant peer review. Editorial peer review procedures did not spread in an orderly way; they were not developed from editorial boards and passed on from journal to journal. Instead, casual referring out of articles on an individual basis may have occurred at any time, beginning in the early to mid-19th century (Burnham, 1990).