Editorial discretion: Peer review or publish and perish?

Abstract

The orthopaedic and general scientific world is entirely awash with publications and their associated data. I recently came across, and was surprised by, a relatively recent paper from the journal eLife , in which researchers established that synapses are more elaborate than previously thought.1 Their research puts the storage capacity of the human brain in the ‘petabyte’ range – more than the volume of information available on the entire internet. That, of course, is not to say that we can process, understand, or even learn this volume of information, but it does highlight the intricacy of biological systems. These days, acquiring data is cheap, and the internet is growing exponentially in size and complexity. This is reflected everywhere, and can clearly be seen in medical science. The volume of papers in indexed and unindexed journals is rising day on day. We are in the middle of an …