As the number of researchers and publications increased, the need for a way to filter or winnow content became necessary and in the 1960's through the late 70's some journals started to introduce peer review in a form very similar to how it is run today \cite{Baldwin_2015}. Interestingly, such changes in the behavior of publishers were also spurred by new technological advances, like photocopying, which facilitated the sharing of manuscripts for peer review \cite{Shema_2014}.
Peer to peer publishing: the rise of preprints
The majority of researchers published and disseminated their research exclusively via journals in the 1960's, largely because that was the only way possible. However, some researchers sought to expedite the process by sharing with their colleagues directly, prior to peer review or publication. These shared manuscripts, which would later become known as "preprints," rose dramatically in certain fields, like physics, math, and economics. Indeed, their popularity and demand would grow so much that a new system for better data management and sharing would become necessary. The Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC), one of two databases hosting preprints, was receiving thousands of preprints per year, a very large amount of information at the time to be organized and collected. Such a data management solution would shortly follow and not only change publishing but would revolutionize how the world interacted.
Preprints and the web
To deal with the growing amount of bibliographic information accumulating at SLAC, a computer database was developed, termed the Stanford Physics Information Retrieval System (SPIRES). SPIRES not only organized bibliographic information, creating a standard used across universities but also allowed for researchers to email the database and request a list of preprints be sent to them. Since papers could not be emailed at the time, the system relied on traditional mail.
While SPIRES greatly improved the flow of information, it often still took weeks for preprints to reach their requester’s mailbox. A typesetting system called .tex introduced in the late 70’s s soon changed this by allowing researchers to write their documents in a specified manner that could be emailed and downloaded and compiled without the need for physical mail.
Soon, physicists were emailing and downloading .tex files at great rates hastening the process of research communication, which again created the problem of information overload. To manage this process, in March 1989, Tim Berners-Lee wrote a document modestly entitled, "Information Management: A Proposal" \cite{BernersLee_1989}. Soon after, the World Wide Web, Berners-Lee’s "modest proposal", was born.