Open Peer Review

Peer Review

(traditional)

Open Peer Review

  • Revealing/blinding the names of reviewers/authors
  • Put more kinds of work under review (grant app, code, etc)
  • Reveal more stages of the work (pre-pub, pub, post-pub)
  • Extend the comment/discussion online via annotation
  • Publish sooner, perform peer review as ongoing process
  • Getting credit for reviewing papers (Publons)
  • and more...

History

Began with biomedical journals (BMJ) to deter conflicts of interest in the pharmaceutical industry

Open Access model development encouraged trial of open peer review models

"Open Science" encourages the sharing of more research outputs, which can all be placed under review and reused as an ongoing activity

Challenges

Major journals do not yet facilitate open processes (or only trial them)

Not all reviewers want to be named (review the reviewer?)

Not all authors want to have the review process shown (hide your weaknesses)

Niche fields do not have many SMEs who can review articles

Examples


BMC publishes names of reviewers

PeerJ allows authors/reviewers to reveal names

Overlay journals add annotation/commenting to OA articles

F1000 publishes pre-print immediately, review next

Open Peer Review

By Billy Meinke

Open Peer Review

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