Resumen en español

Quality peer-review remains central to current international scientifi c and technical publishing and proposal assessment methods. As incompetent review and perceived bias remain the most cited problems with peer review processes commonly employed in scientifi c review of manuscript and proposals, creating and maintaining a quality pool of engaged, responsive and qualifi ed peer reviewers is essential to scientifi c publishing and dissemination. An important operational principle for the peer reviewing system is that all who utilize this publishing system should then also review a commensurate load on behalf of the system. This would also imply that those who compose and submit technical manuscripts are competent to assess and levy fair criticism of other’s work in their fi eld. Given the large and rapid expansion in numbers of submitted manuscripts from nontraditional sources, including many developing countries, expansion of the peer-reviewing pool to these sources is necessary both to accommodate their respective, newly imposed reviewing burdens on the already over-burdened system, and to engage new communities in the traditional process of vetting and validating scientifi c and technical works.