Open access, open review, public review...too many faces for just one coin.
I read utmost interesting comments from several colleagues about the meaning and the potential dangerous side-effects of open access journals...we can discuss about them for years; also, we can discuss about the opportunity of open review but nobody says that just public reviews, as well as public authors' answers, would dramatically improve both review process and articles' quality.
Few, very few journals (either open or not open access) are working on this item and I hope that much more will do in the next future.
What do you mean by 'public review'? Do you intend to put your paper first on Web to elicit public opinion? If you do that the opinion may vary so much that you will fail to arrive at any useful conclusion. If you mean that the reviewers' name should be made known to the author, then I would like to say that will be hazardous for many reviewers. I have been reviewing research articles for more than 40 years. I had seen in many cases the reviewers are to face awkward situation if their names are made known to the authors, the relation between the author and reviewer may get strained, the author may become hostile .to the reviewer, and so on. Whenever I review a paper, my condition is that my name will not be revealed to the author. With this condition I can review a paper objectively without being subjected to any bias.
There should be much more responsibility and transparency also in peer-review process: some very important journals have already set the complete transparency making freely accessible the whole peer-review procedure with reviewers' comments, Authors' responses and names of reviewers. Nobody, has killed any reviewers and all, absolutely all scientists may evaluate if reviewers and/or Authors have done a good work.
This is what I call: SCIENCE!
Best regards
MB
Just a relevant link
https://www.nature.com/nature/peerreview/debate/nature04991.html
Depends in which context it is considered. If the number of publications in reviewed journals make a carrier, of course the relationship will be tense. Aside be said, it is not very difficult to guess who the reviewer is, he often merely fend his territory.
If, as it should be, the review aims at improving the publication, correcting rough errors, and making suggestions, rather that censoring and evaluating, the reviewer is better off disclosing his name, it could build his reputation.
- Badges
- Science topic