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.
“Open peer review” (OPR), despite being a major pillar of Open Science, has neither a standardized definition nor an agreed schema of its features and implementations. The literature reflects this, with numerous overlapping and contradictory definitions.
The traditional forms of scientific publishing and peer review do not live up to all demands of efficient communication and quality assurance in today’s highly diverse and rapidly evolving world of science.
This is a collection of Blog items, published on nature.com, dedicated to Peer Review.
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.
