Short Description
This is a collection of Blog items, published on nature.com, dedicated to Peer Review.
This is a collection of Blog items, published on nature.com, dedicated to Peer Review.
At present, there is neither a standardized definition of “open peer review” (OPR) nor an agreed schema of its features and implementations, which is highly problematic for discussion of its potential benefits and drawbacks. This new series of blog posts reports on work to resolve these difficulties by analysing the literature for available definitions of “open peer review” and “open review”. In all, 122 definitions have been collected and codified against a range of independent OPR traits, in order to build a coherent typology of the many different adaptations to the traditional peer review that has come to be signified by the term OPR and hence provide a unified definition.
Today’s academic publishing system may be problematic, but many argue it is the only one available to provide adequate research evaluation. Pandelis Perakakis introduces an open community platform, LIBRE, which seeks to challenge the assumption that peer review can only be handled by journal editors. By embracing a new culture of open, transparent and independent research evaluation, the academic community can more productively contribute to global knowledge.
The use of journal hierarchy for assessing the reputation of research works and their authors has contributed to a competitive environment that is having a detrimental effect on scientific reliability. Open access repositories administered by Universities or research organizations are a valuable infrastructure that could support the transition to a more collaborative and efficient scholarly evaluation and communication system. Open Scholar has coordinated a consortium of six partners to develop the first Open Peer Review Module (OPRM) for institutional repositories. The module integrates an overlay peer review service, coupled with a transparent reputation system, on top of institutional repositories. It is provided freely as open source software.
“Publish or perish” is tattooed on the mind of every academic. Like it or loathe it, publishing in high-profile journals is the fast track to positions in prestigious universities with illustrious colleagues and lavish resources, celebrated awards and plentiful grant funding.
This is a blog item, published by WIRED, which is about the story of a neuroscientist named Niko Kriegeskorte, a cognitive neuroscientist at the Medical Research Council in the UK who, since December 2015, has performed all of his peer review openly. That means he publishes his reviews as he finishes them on his personal blog—sharing on Twitter and Facebook, too—before a paper is even accepted.
