Journal publishers and the rest of the academic publishing world only have yourselves to blame for the problems with what they call "peer review".

I write as a graduate physicist (Imperial), a specialist lawyer in and published academically on complex technical evidence, a former university lecturer in law and former member of an editorial board.

Peer review in science has always meant to me the process, if and when it occurs, of scrutiny by intellectual peers of the work of others after they have published and brought their efforts into the public domain and not before.

This is an essential aspect of healthy science. Science requires open communication to thrive. What you call "peer review" closes it off and is not.

In contrast, the publishing industry in a commercial endeavour to give credence to the papers they publish, call the pre publication vetting of articles for publication "peer review". That is not and never has been "peer review" in science and it is a corruption and bastardisation of the term.

In academic circles the term "academic refereeing" is used and might be a more appropriate term, if somewhat overstretching the point. A couple of old blokes skimming over a mate's paper in the pub on a Sunday lunchtime is not what I would grace with refereeing and is most certanly not "peer reivew".

If you claim what you call "peer review" is not done by a couple of old blokes in the pub on a Sunday, then tell me how many times it is done whilst sitting on the toilet or on a plane whilst drinking the complimentary drinks or in fact not properly done at all. And the plain fact is you cannot.

I suggest more care is taken with the words used and that we all take care to use words that mean what they are meant to and not what they are not.

We need to restore the term "peer review" to its proper usage and thereby try to keep the nonsense and non science out of science.