Public Peer Review

Examples

Chemistry

Antony Williams:

"Public peer review is, in many ways, already happening. The blogosphere has fast become an environment where science and publications are openly discussed and critiqued in the public eye. Take for example the recent blog discussions regarding sodium hydride as an oxidant that were conducted on the TotallySynthetic Blog . This blog post openly critiqued science reported in JACS and in the process removed the journal and the authors from the exchange. Since such “peer review” is already occurring online, and the example given is not the only one, the near future will see peer review and commentaries being posted directly to a publication online similar to what we are seeing already in the blogosphere. Authors will be held accountable to their work not only by original peer reviewers but also by the community at large. This will take some gentle navigation in the early days to deal with potential flame wars and open attacks but ultimately is likely to become mainstream and expected from the publishers. Personally I believe it will be quite some time before such openness will have an impact on the tenure system and such a system is entrenched, in my opinion, in local organization politics and relationships over productivity and scientific impact. At the end of the day interpersonal relationships and conformance to an organization’s expectations and needs will define tenure conversion." (http://www.altsearchengines.com/2010/01/10/a-talk-with-antony-williams-of-chemspider/)