Is peer review still the content industry's upper house?

Key points • Although ‘peer review’ has quasi-sacred status, times are changing, and peer review is not necessarily a single and uniformly reliable gold standard. • For publishers, peer review is a process not an outcome. • Academics understand peer review, but are often ignorant about the quality checking mechanisms within wider publishing. • Self-publishing has led to the much wider availability of publishing services – these now being used by all stakeholders in publishing. • How should universities evaluate comment and ideas that were first disseminated within a non-academic market? • Rather than an upper house, is peer review today more of a galley kitchen? Department of Journalism and Publishing, Kingston University, Thames, Surrey, Kingston upon Thames KT1 2EE, UK