Open Peer Review

Open Peer Review is a form of Peer Review, where readers have the right to consult the commentaries by peers in the scientific validation process.

Open peer review consists of signed reviews that can be posted on the Internet. This transparency aims to resolve some of the drawbacks of anonymous reviewers in the normal peer review process.

Peer Commentary refers to the added possibility to add comments.

Definition

Here's a comment by the Open Access expert Peter Suber:

"Open review and open peer review are new terms for evolving phenomena. They don't have precise or technical definitions. No matter how they're defined, there's a large area of overlap between them.

If there's ever a difference, some kinds of open review accept evaluative comments from any readers, even anonymous readers, while other kinds try to limit evaluative comments to those from "peers" with expertise or credentials in the relevant field. But neither kind of review has a special name, and I think each could fairly be called "open review" or "open peer review"." (email correspondence, June 23, 2007)

Example

The Nature Experiment

URL = http://www.nature.com/nature/peerreview/

The journal Nature undertook an experiment in open commentary in 2006, but concluded it was not successfull:

"There was a significant level of expressed interest in open peer review… A small majority of those authors who did participate received comments, but typically very few, despite significant web traffic. Most comments were not technically substantive. Feedback suggests that there is a marked reluctance among researchers to offer open comments." (http://www.nature.com/nature/peerreview/debate/nature05535.html)

Other examples, by Michael Nielsen:

"The Nature trial is just one of many attempts at comment sites for scientists. The earliest example I’m aware of is the Quick Reviews site, built in 1997, and discontinued in 1998. Physics Comments was built a few years later, and discontinued in 2006. A more recent site, Science Advisor, is still active, but has more members (1139) than reviews (1008). It seems that people want to read reviews of scientific papers, but not write them." (http://michaelnielsen.org/blog/?p=448)

Others

The blog-based open peer review of a book, four lessons: http://grandtextauto.org/2009/05/12/blog-based-peer-review-four-surprises/

Status Report

Trends in 2006, summarized by Peter Suber at http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/newsletter/01-02-07.htm

"Experiments combining Open Access with new forms of peer review were not new in 2006 but burst into scholarly consciousness almost as if they were new. The main cause was a series of well-publicized initiatives, from the open-review experiment at Nature to JournalReview.org, Biowizard, Philica, and PLoS ONE. It got help from the US Patent Office's venture into open patent review and Grigory (Grisha) Perelman's decision to disseminate his award-winning work on arXiv and dispense with publication in a peer-reviewed journal. Whenever I covered these stories in my blog or newsletter, I was afraid to give the impression that OA intrinsically favored one kind of peer review or that we had to wait for consensus on the best method of review before proceeding to implement OA. This misunderstanding did occur in 2006, as in the past, but much less often than another that I didn't expect. A surprising number of journalists, even science journalists, mistook open review for non-review. This is a fallacy even for those who think open review is a step backwards. It reminds me of the early days of the OA movement, when journalists and publishers couldn't hear a description of OA, no matter how clear and detailed, without leaping to the conclusion that the idea was to bypass peer review and violate copyright. The fallacious leap should decline over time, as open review becomes more familiar and debate turns to specific differences between open and conventional review and even different flavors of open review. But for now we're still stuck in the period when even small suggestions for reform trigger defensive panic." (http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/newsletter/01-02-07.htm)

Discussion

John Moor at http://www.nature.com/nature/peerreview/debate/op5.html

"The term 'peer review' is often equated with 'gold standard'. Hence, the politically motivated, lazy or unscrupulous can use the peer-reviewed literature selectively, to make arguments that are seriously flawed, or even damaging to public policy.

This kind of fiasco might be avoided if the public had better access to the peer-reviewed literature, and if bona fide scientists were willing to give the public more assistance in interpreting it properly." (requoted from http://www.enroweb.com/blogsciences/index.php?2006/06/06/27-le-peer-review-en-proces)

Why open review has been a failure so far

Michael Nielsen:

"The problem all these sites have is that while thoughtful commentary on scientific papers is certainly useful for other scientists, there are few incentives for people to write such comments. Why write a comment when you could be doing something more “useful”, like writing a paper or a grant? Furthermore, if you publicly criticize someone’s paper, there’s a chance that that person may be an anonymous referee in a position to scuttle your next paper or grant application.

To grasp the mindset here, you need to understand the monklike intensity that ambitious young scientists bring to the pursuit of scientific publications and grants. To get a position at a major University the most important thing is an impressive record of scientific papers. These papers will bring in the research grants and letters of recommendation necessary to be hired. Competition for positions is so fierce that 80 hour plus work weeks are common. The pace relaxes after tenure, but continued grant support still requires a strong work ethic. It’s no wonder people have little inclination to contribute to the online comment sites." (http://michaelnielsen.org/blog/?p=448)

French

Ghislaine Chartron, at http://archivesic.ccsd.cnrs.fr/sic_00117798

"Sans bouleverser fondamentalement les processus de communication et de publication scientifique, ces innovations [sociales] ont introduit, pour la publication scientifique (...) une ouverture des cercles d’autorité qui ne peuvent pas ignorer les échanges informels portés par le réseau ; l’autorité désignée (comités scientifiques fermés) doit faire face à l’agora ouverte des autres chercheurs. Ce dernier point renvoie à la notion de peer commentary – pour reprendre les termes de S. Harnad – qui s’est développée de façon inégale et de manière souvent informelle ; le peer commentary est perçu majoritairement comme une fonction supplémentaire pouvant améliorer la qualité de l’évaluation, mais ne pouvant en aucune façon se substituer au peer review (Harnad, 1998). Le processus d’évaluation scientifique est resté jusqu’à présent assez stable dans le cadre du numérique. Certes, au niveau organisationnel, il a bénéficié d’une logistique d’appui plus élaborée (utilisation possible d’un logiciel de workflow), mais aucune évolution plus profonde n’a vraiment pris place. Contrairement à de nombreuses formes de débat public, la fonction d’évaluation reste attachée à un travail approfondi, cadré dans une relation de confiance entre des experts et des comités de rédaction. La transposition de cette fonction sur d’autres vecteurs pourrait très bien s’envisager mais il n’en est rien pour le moment, la revue restant le repère structurant de la publication scientifique, même dans les champs les plus innovants en termes de communication numérique. Toutefois, il faut signaler l’ouverture très récente (juin 2006) du service PloSOne qui vise à introduire des débats plus ouverts pour l’évaluation des articles des revues de cet éditeur, articles qui sont déjà en accès libre par ailleurs. L’évolution est peut-être en marche ?…" (http://archivesic.ccsd.cnrs.fr/sic_00117798)

More Information

Debate on peer review in Nature, at http://www.nature.com/nature/peerreview/debate/

On the relative failure of Nature's own Open Peer Review experiment, at http://www.nature.com/nature/peerreview/debate/nature05535.html

French

Open Peer Review and Peer Commentary, http://www.enroweb.com/blogsciences/index.php?2006/12/05/81-peer-commentary

Critique of classic peer review, at http://www.enroweb.com/blogsciences/index.php?2006/06/06/27-le-peer-review-en-proces

Opinion piece on the merits of open peer review by João Pedro de Magalhães.