I only got as far as undergraduate research assistant in the academia racket, so maybe I'm not "with it" in the way serious researchers are, but is this to suggest that this wasn't being done, by default, on everything already?

Any reputable journal had a reasonably robust peer review process (exact details vary of course) but historically it was strictly confidential. Only over the past perhaps 2 decades has a process where reviews are made public begun to gain mainstream support.