The New York Times recently published an interesting article about how the traditional peer review process is being looked at in the context of the democracy of the web. It described an experiment by the journal Shakespeare Quarterly which posted four articles not yet accepted for publication and invited people to submit comments on the articles. They received over 350 comments.
The article talks about how more academic writers are reaching out for feedback from readers while a work is still in progress, using websites like MediaCommons, and what some of the implications these kinds of changes may have for tenure and promotion decisions at universities.