Is Peer Review necessary?

The focus of the open access movement is opening up access to the scholarly, peer-reviewed journal article.

Open access is one of many changes or potential changes to scholarly communications in the era of the world wide web. It is important not to mix things up (conflate them); but it is also important to remember that the web has opened up the potential of scholarly communications in many ways, at all once.

One of the other possibilities for scholarly communications is peer review reform. For a thought-provoking exploration of this topic and some of the alternative to peer review, please see Olivier Ertzscheid's blogpost, Faut-Il Tuer Le Pair? (in french).