@Nalam, I think the same way. Open review might potentially generate some unpleasant inter-personal interactions (especially between authors of rejected manuscript and the reviewer who voted for rejection). I think the best option is double-blind review systems. Ideally, the names of reviewers, together with their revisions (and authors' response) should be additionally published (possible as on-line only appendix to the manusctript) after acceptance of the mauscript. This would make the whole revision process clear for all readers and would increase reviewers' responsibility. The question is what to do with manuscripts (and their revisions) that were rejected.

The peer review is a highly subjective process. To mitigate the impact of the subjective factor, quality publishers use several (typically three) reviewers. Big publishers of high impact journals and books, like Elsevier, Wiley's and others, use electronic submission by means of dedicated forms. If you encounter this kind of submission, you can be sure that the publisher has established an objective system for reviewing. Unfortunately, many publishers satisfy themselves with the opinion of one of the in-house editors and maybe one or two additional opinions, usually subdued with respect to the first one. That gives you less confidence in the quality of the publishing process.

When you get the referees' reports, consider them as tools to help you improve your paper. The reports are seldom so negative as to suggest that your work be rejected, all three at a time. The reports contain comments, sometime biting, which help you see what others perceive as the weak points in your reasoning. By correcting them and re-submitting by the time set by the editor, you can be almost sure of having produced a valuable paper and get it published.

It is therefore difficult, if not meaningless, to talk about evolution or revolution in this field of activity. The authors certainly evolve, owing to the advice they receive from the referees. The publishers evolve by engaging more, and more competent, referees. On the whole, I don't see any space for a revolution, except working on oneself and producing better and better work.

@Igor, thank you for your input. Do you realy think the peer-review systems, that are used currently are perfect? And we have nothing to do? Have you never been waiting for editors decision for 3-4 months? And the decision was finally "reject" (I think the decision is to be made in several days if the paper qualifies for rejection "at the glance"). Did you never encounter the situation, that the journal has rejected your manuscript and shortly thereafter you can find very similar work published, and one of the authors (usually the last one - senior author) in a member of the editorial board of the journal that rejected your work previously? Don't you think reviewers may not be "hidden" behind the single-blind reviewing process, their names should be disclosed to authors/readers (possibly together with their revisions)? This would increase the responsibility of the reviewers and protect against "competition bias".

@Pina: I agree, as long as everything is (at least in some measure) steereable by industry/business, the system will be imperfect. The open systems may be the solution (including open reviewing systems), possibly.

I have very limited experience as a reviewer..but what I feel is that there are not enough reviewers now and researchers are sometimes not willing to provide good job in time because they are busy with their own research works and they feel this as an un-paid burden! (I might be wrong on this and I beg for excuse, if it hurts anybody!). One vague thought came to me just now is how is it if Journals start giving some merit points to the reviewers as per how they perform the review, mainly interms of timely submission of the reviews? They can call it like "Reviewer Score" (just like the RG Score!!) and the one who has higher score is more reputed reviewer..In that case everybody will be willing to extend their help for review process and feel responsible..Researchers can display their Reviewer Scores in their profiles and journals can chose such people for their future review jobs...

@Nalam, thank you for the valuable comment. I think exactly the same way! Assuming they are doing their job honestly, reviewers are almost allways "unvisible heroes" (some journals publish their names once-a-year,or only the names of the "most productive" ones). They should be rewarded in some way, especially if their work is fruitfull, the reviewer scoring system can be a good example...

I have some experience as reviewer for international journal, also for journal in my own country, and most of them work with a double-blind system (you don't know who the author was, and the author doesn't know who are doing the review). Nevertheless some important journals have recently begun with open-review, like British Medical Journal Open, http://bmjopen.bmj.com/

where you can read the reviewers comments to the manuscript and the names of the reviewers. I found it very interesting and also challenging.

Thank Pedro, this system is nice, and I hope all the journals will use the same system, some time you feel the reviewers not get your points, and I hope in the future the reviewers can ask the author direct if they need any explanation

@ Pedro L Pancorbo-Hidalgo, Thanks for sharing the open-review system for the selected journals. But, I think revealing the names of the reviewers is not a healthy system for both authors and reviewers. If we know the reviewer for our papers and if we encounter them somewhere, I believe we will not be able to interact freely without any prejudice. As per the double-blind review system, I did encounter such process for 2 journals. I liked the idea because as a reviewer I can provide a honest review without being influenced by the authors' names and their reputation, if any.

I am not sure which aspect of peer-reviewing are you referring for. It will be easier to respond to your intended question if you could share it clearly.

@Nalam, I think the same way. Open review might potentially generate some unpleasant inter-personal interactions (especially between authors of rejected manuscript and the reviewer who voted for rejection). I think the best option is double-blind review systems. Ideally, the names of reviewers, together with their revisions (and authors' response) should be additionally published (possible as on-line only appendix to the manusctript) after acceptance of the mauscript. This would make the whole revision process clear for all readers and would increase reviewers' responsibility. The question is what to do with manuscripts (and their revisions) that were rejected.

I have served as reveiwer of hundreds of submitted papers and have had hundreds of reviews of my own papers to read. The relative values of the reviews of my papers has ranged between the extremes of highly helpful criticism to unreasoned vitriolic rejection. I have two suggestions for improvement of the process. The more practical is that the journal editor filter out the unhelpful reviews in her/his decision and reply to the author. And further, that the editor keep track of which reviewers produce the comments most useful in improving the quality of the papers published by the journal (and which ones don't). Some sort of award system (other than giving the good reviewers more work) could be instituted.

My less practical, but more universal solution is to make the review process completely open. All reviews would be signed. I know that some of the more critical reviews I have gotten would have been more thoughtfully written if the reviewer were not anonymous. I would also like to be able to acknowledge the suggestions of the more constructive reviewers in the revised ms.

The reason this solution is not immediately practical is that the reviewer pool (already too limited) is likely to shrink still further in such a system. However, if approached incrementally and with a public reward system (masthead recognition of Open Reviewers, for example) it might catch on. My experience with the NIH system of proposal review in which the reviewers are persoonally accountable for their reviews withing the panel and as part of the panel to the proposal submitters, leads to much more helpful and reasoned reviews than that of the NSF system which is completely opaque.

NIH does not have a harder time getting reviewers than NSF because it is a recognition to be on an HIH review panel. A similar system might work for journals, particularly the more prestigious.

@Pina, the most anihilistic approach to the matter, but probably one of the most valuable ones (and forcing me to think critically...) I've ever met here... Thanks a lot :) The reflections of Wheeler - "a must read"!!

Some qualties of peer review :

Double blind review - Fine

Open Review - Not Very Fine

Online review - Fast

Offline Review - Very Slow

Peer Review - Fine

Editorial Review - Good but fast

Will there be a time problem in the future for peer reviewers if they have to peer review the data as well as the article arising (thinking of the increasing trend for data sharing related to the publication that arises out of it).

There are very few reviewers who can claim to have domain knowledge of all the papers they get. When the journal list both open and otherwise keep increasing, it is difficult to get quality reviewers. that makes a good number of publications in unestablished journal suspect from the point of view of quality. Publish in journal which are at least listed in ABDC, Scopus etc.

Problems with Peer-Review: A Brief Summary

1: Good science does not have to be published in the peer-reviewed literature.

Groundbreaking scientific books, like Darwin's Origin of the Species or Newton's Principia were not published in peer-reviewed journals. There are many examples of leading journals like Nature and Science having rejected important research, including research that later won the Nobel prize.

2: The peer-review system faces two common criticisms: (1) that the system wrongly rejects scientifically valid papers, and (2) that the system wrongly accepts scientifically flawed papers.

There are many examples where journals had to retract papers because errors, or even outright fraud, went undetected by the reviewers.

3: If you believe that scientific peer-reviewers are like perfectly objective robots, then you believe a myth.

All scientists are humans, and none are inerrant.

4:.The peer-review system is often biased against non-majority viewpoints.

The peer-review system is largely devoted to maintaining the status quo."The overwhelming flaw in the traditional peer review system is that it listed so heavily toward consensus that it showed little tolerance for genuinely new findings and interpretations."

The above is a summary of an article:" Problems with Peer-Review: A Brief Summary, by Casey Luskin.

http://www.evolutionnews.org/2012/02/problems_with_p056241.html

As far as we have editorial board of professional people, referee system of more than one (2 and 3) and recenly we have open access to certain published journals easily and no time. Then the problem is that the quality of paper and referee. I am with standard forms of evaluation of th manscript from A to Z. Therefore, I think, the reviewing system is mainly depending on the editorial board or chief of editor of the journal.

The present review system is difficult to change, pragmatically speaking. Given the rate at which most reputed journals receive submissions, i am not sure they would immediately want to change their streamlined processes.