Introduction to Open Peer Review

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Introduction to Open Peer Review

• Katherine Parker
• LIBR 559L

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What is Open Peer Review?

• Traditional peer review
• Anonymous
• Single blind most common
• Strongest argument for allows reviewers to
  comment freely without fear of repercussions
• Open Peer Review
• Does away with anonymity
• Many models
• Collaboration easier in the online environment

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History of Open Peer Review

• Post publication commentary
• Current Anthropology 1959
• Brain and Behavioral Science - 1970s
• Psycholoquy - Harnad
• Traditional system begins breaking down
• 1986 - Drummond Rennies Peer Review Conferences
  every four years
• 1990 - ArXiv.org - Ginsparg
• 1999 - British Medical Journal (BMJ)

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Criticisms

• Peer Review in its current form has many
  detractors
• Slow
• Bias/Abuse
• Often doesnt weed out bad research
• Conservative about new ideas
• Too many journals to keep up quality

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Critics

• There seems to be no study too fragmented, no
  hypothesis too trivial no conclusions too
  trifling or too unjustified, and no grammar and
  syntax too offensive for a paper to end up in
  print. - D. Rennie, 1986 editorial announcing
  the first peer review Congress
• But we know that the system of peer review is
  biased, unjust, unaccountable, incomplete, easily
  fixed, often insulting, usually ignorant,
  occasionally foolish, and frequently wrong. -R.
  Horton, editor of The Lancet

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Some Current Models

• PLoSONE if published, papers will be made
  available for community-based open peer review
  involving online annotation, discussion, and
  rating. peer-reviewed first, then opened up for
  comments and rating
• Philica is like eBay for academics. still
  provides a process of academic peer review,
  allowing proper critical examination of ideas and
  findings. However, for the very first time this
  process is both transparent and dynamic.
  comments are anonymous, but reviewers MUST be
  members of research insts
• Naboj Online reviews of arxiv.org physics
  archive, an attempt to provide a guide that
  researchers can use to sift through the best
  information
• Biology Direct making the author responsible for
  obtaining reviewers' reports via the journal's
  Editorial Board making the peer review process
  open rather than anonymous and making the
  reviewers' reports public, thus increasing the
  responsibility of the referees and eliminating
  sources of abuse in the refereeing process.
• Open Science - Science 2.0 http//scienceblogs.c
  om/

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Impact on Librarians

• Every year libraries spend more money on
  collecting peer-reviewed journals, yet for many
  of their patrons these journals are no longer the
  primary literature. W.Y. Arms, Journal of
  Electronic Publishing, 2002
• The idea of authority is changing
• Will change what we lead patrons to
• May need to spend more time on information
  literacy
• RSS feeds important

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Criticisms of Open PR

• Researchers have been found to favour traditional
  PR
• Nature experiment
• Journal editorials its the best weve got
• Fear of bland/timid reviews if not anonymous
• Harnad prefers open peer commentary, supports the
  invisible hand of peer review
• "The Invisible Hand of Peer Review", Exploit
  Interactive, issue 5, April 2000 URL
  lthttp//www.exploit-lib.org/issue5/peer-review/gt
• Naboj example

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Discussion

• Controversial topic
• Will continue to evolve on a discipline by
  discipline basis
• What does the class think about
• The models presented
• The future of open peer review