I would say the purpose of peer-review is to ensure that the work is correct (i.e. gives reliable information about the world).

"Improving the quality" doesn't mean much if the end result is improved but wrong (fake data, wrong statistics, inaccurate interpretation of the literature,...)

"Selecting the best papers" is.. useless IMO. The reader should select the papers they want to read but any results, as long as they're correct, should be published and available to read.

#PeerReview #Academia

@elduvelle

I think that you're perspective fits with option 1.

I know a lot of older academics that hold hard to thinking peer review's primary purpose is option 2.