1. ddobbs
  2. "Nature" tries open peer review

"Nature" tries open peer review

By ddobbs on June 8, 2006.

In a promising experiment, Nature reports that it is beginning a trial in which it will evaluate submitted papers through two tracks, one using its current, traditional closed peer review system and another using open peer review. As the blog O'Reilly Radar notes, this is a highly encouraging and significant trial, and one with Nature's aggressive and creative exploration of how the Internet can enhance and improve scientific publishing. The O'Reilly article, well worth reading (and short), reports Nature's open peer review will allow anyone in a paper's field to comment on a submitted paper, which will be accessible via the web. Nature will compare the results of the two evaluation means once the trial period is over.

This could, of course, end up being a forgotten experiment. But it's encouraging to see one of the two leading journals try open peer-review in such a high-profile, realistic, and meaningful way. The experiment should be well worth watching.

Tags
Science

More like this

Nature Precedings
It is infuriating how stodgy biomedical sciences are in terms of information sharing. It's not clear how much of this is bred of inherent conservatism, the pressures of a very competitive field or just plain technobackwardness. But while mathematics and physics have had preprint servers for years,…
Nature Lets It All Hang Out Through Open Peer Review
One of the fundamental principles of modern science, as well as other academic pursuits, is peer review. By subjecting a submitted paper to evaluation by other scientists in the authors' field, the solid science advances at the expense of the not-so-good and the interesting and relevant prevails…
Some perspective on "predatory" open access journals
Predatory open access journals seem to be a hot topic these days. In fact, there seems to be kind of a moral panic surrounding them. I would like to counter the admittedly shocking and scary stories around that moral panic by pointing out that perhaps we shouldn't be worrying so much about a fairly…
A Review of Peer Review
I was alerted to the fact that strange things are happening at Nature Magazine. From the Nature website: Peer review is the bedrock of scientific publication (for Nature's position on peer review, see our Guide to Authors). It is widely considered essential for improving submitted papers and…