Stage 6: Open Rewiew
Allow open, continuous peer review. Other Information:
Open, Continuous Peer Review -- As a gatekeeping function, peer review relies on the expertise and attention of a few judges.
That attention is time limited, in that once the editor issues a decision, peer review is complete. But, of course, that is
not really the case. Most peer review occurs informally after publication among scientists who are reading, evaluating, critiquing,
and applying the published research. This evaluation can also evolve over time. An exciting demonstration might get published
in a high-prestige outlet, but enthusiasm will dissipate rapidly if a critical confound is identified. Another article might
have substantial difficulty getting published but may come to be appreciated as an effective challenge to prevailing wisdom
over time. Except for the rapidly growing community of science bloggers, almost all of the dynamic postpublication discussion
appears in unpublished conversations in labs, in reading groups, and between individual pairs of colleagues.
Stakeholder(s):
- Scientific Community Members: Stage 6 opens the review process so that all members of the community can contribute and evaluation can evolve over time (Arms,
2002; Harnad, 1998). The formal, editor-based review process, now managed through review services, becomes just one component
of evaluation rather than the only evaluation. Reviews from the solicited review services are posted in the repository next
to the article (Stage 5), and a commenting system is linked to each article with reviews from unsolicited review services
and from single reviewers.
- Research Readers: Readers can comment, ask questions, and grade articles; authors can reply; all can discuss. Comments are evaluated—reviewing
the reviewers—with positive and negative votes. Grades of articles and comments are aggregated to provide summary statements
of the article and reviewer points. Open reviewers accumulate reputation status by the comments they make to articles.
- PLoS ONE: Even though this is the last stage of our publishing and review utopia, there are already a variety of journals that are developing
these practices. PLoS ONE, for example, has an open commentary system linked to each article.
- Journal of Medical Internet Research: The Journal of Medical Internet Research has added an open peer review option to its standard review process ("Open Peer-Review,"
n.d.). One of the most interesting examples is F1000 (http://f1000.com/), a new journal launching in 2012 for biology and
medicine, a fully OA journal that provides immediate publication, open peer review, open data, and flexibility to update published
articles with new versions.
- Research Authors: ... changing to an open review system would have a radical effect on the role of peer review for authors. In the existing
system, peer review is a barrier to the authors' objective—publishing the article. Authors submit articles to journals that
they think should accept the article. Reviewers usually prevent that from occurring.
- Peer Reviewers
- Scientists: However, since Stage 3, the scientist's ultimate objective is no longer to get published, because everything is published.
The objective is to influence future ideas and investigations, that is, what should be the key incentive in the first place
(Nosek, Spies, & Motyl, in press). With openness, peer review becomes an asset to the authors. Work that is disinteresting
will not be reviewed. Work that is interesting will get reviewed a lot. Reviews become the life blood of evaluating, improving,
and making the research have impact. The biggest threat in an open model is not to be reviewed, it is to be ignored.
Objective(s):
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