Nature
Nature 481,25(05 January 2012) doi:10.1038/481025a By Jerome Ravetz, Institute for Science, Innovation and Society
View Journal Article / Working PaperScience is unique among areas of organized activity and production in that it has an informal quality-assurance system: peer review, publication and replication. The system has worked well since its inception in the seventeenth century, when the scientific journal came into being. But it is now being challenged as technology changes social practices of science. How might it evolve?