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The early days of peer review: five insights from historic reports
A crop of referee reports from the Royal Society’s archive reveal discussions about cutting printing costs, reviewer holidays and even editing images.
Chemist Dorothy Hodgkin wrote barely 50 words when asked to review the full manuscript of the structure of DNA by Francis Crick and James Watson in 1953, which was published in Proceedings of the Royal Society in April 1954 1. In her sole comment, beyond a series of yes and no answers, Hodgkin suggests the duo should “touch up” photographs to eliminate distracting reflections of “chairs in the perspex rod” — a technical fix that modern cameras perform routinely. In 1877, reviewer Robert Clifton finished a 24-page report on two related papers on optics, with an apology: “How you will hate me for bothering you with this tremendously long letter, but I hope before we meet time will have softened your anger.”
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