 are the one of the only means available to quantitatively evaluate scientists . The rise of interdisciplinary science  confounds this problem, because patterns of publication vary between disciplines and fields, making potential candidates for positions or grants difficult to evaluate and compare. Worse, bibliometrics are typically blind to the peer review process. A scientist who is publishing less of their own work, but reproducing others results, and/or giving clear, detailed and constructive feedback to other scientists may be contributing much more to their field than a scientist who is quickly publishing many articles, but providing limited, non constructive, or incoherent feedback in his reviews. Bibliometrics alone would rank the latter above the former, in terms of contribution to their field.
Bibliometrics identify a scientist's reputation with the number of citations their work has received. Accordingly scientists typically attempt to publish in the highest impact journals possible. While high impact journals are perceived as prestigious in the scientific community they often limit access to scientists work by requiring subscriptions. These subscriptions typically cost upwards of $200 dollars per year per journal and typically individuals who do not have access via their institution cannot access work published in these journals. There are alternatives, so called, Open Access (OA) journals. These journals do not charge users to read content, instead they charge authors to have their work published. Publishing a single OA article can cost upward of $1200 dollars. While many authors prefer to have their work accessible to available to all, the financial burden of OA publishing is often not justifiable for many scientists, particularly graduate students and post-docs.
What are the opportunities for peer review?
In physics, mathematics and computer science, the use of the preprint server arXiv.org is ubiquitous. ArXiv.org acts as a supplement to traditional peer review mechanisms in those fields. It hosts scientific manuscripts which have not yet been subjected to complete peer review, which are typically uploaded at the same time as their submission to a scientific journal, these manuscripts are called preprints. By hosting work in progress, arXiv.org (and other preprint servers) facilitate rapid communication of new results, discoveries and ideas. In contrast to scientific journals, which take months or years to publish newly submitted work, preprint servers take only a matter of days. While many other fields have begun to adopt preprint servers , their use is by no means ubiquitous in the OoL and astrobiology communities. This provides an opportunity for those communities, we can make a push (following suit from traditional biology) to make use of preprint servers to improve the availability of our science immediately.
One of the key benefits of preprints, is the ability for scientists to get feedback on their work faster than through journal mediated peer review. In order for that to be productive, scientists must be willing to dedicate more of their time to reading, reviewing, critiquing and improving the work of their peers. Most scientists are already doing this by reviewing journal submissions, but adopting preprints means that scientists will have to go out of their way to improve the work of someone whom they might be directly competing with. This might appear as a naive waste of time for early career scientists, struggling to get ahead. However, in the face of rising pressure to publish, it is becoming clear that scientists are becoming increasingly collaborative . This willingness appears to be based on the fact that they can still receive credit for small contributions, allowing them to gain more publications, which are the gold standard of scientist's reputations. This suggests that if scientists were to receive some kind of useful credit for reviewing the work of others, in a meaningful and constructive manner, they would make time to do so. This provides an important opportunity to improve the qua