Bizarre Nature
September 28th, 2006 by Kelley
Nature, one of the most prestigious journals for scientists to publish their work in, is starting something a bit bizarre.
Normally, when you want to publish the results of your research, you submit a paper to an appropriate journal. The editor solicits a couple people in your field to review your paper, and based on their recommendations the editor decides whether to accept or reject your paper for publication in their journal.
Nature has started a new feature for authors/reviewers, an online “Peer Review Trial“. When you submit your manuscript to Nature, they will post it online as a sort of blog. Anyone can access the manuscript and read it. If you are a reader who happens to be affiliated with the field/topic that the paper is written under, than you may also do a sort of mini-review in the form of a comment. Supposedly only people who work in that given field of the manuscript topic can comment on the paper. None of these papers are in press or have been accepted for publication. Then, after a given amount of time, the editors will close the commenting board, review the comments, and use those comments in further consideration for publication of that manuscript.
I haven’t quite made up my mind yet on how I feel about this. On the one hand, there is the potential to get a wide range of reviews from several/many people world-wide (typically, you only get 2, maybe 3 reviewers to look at your manuscript when you submit papers the normal way). On the other hand, there is no anonymity, people can be very biased in science based on reputation and that can and does affect the outcome of reviews.
I don’t know, what do you think?
It’s certainly a more interactive way of going about the process… One that takes advantages of the power of digital mediums like the internet. Whether that’s a good thing or not… perhaps only time will tell. I do find it interesting that they’re encouraging commentors to use full names, with official email addresses of their institutions. To some degree at least, this should help discourage the nastiness that comes with anonymity.
I think it’s a great idea and is in fact the way science should advance. It eliminates the cliques, exclusivities, and “good old boy” networks from controlling the way science is done (via funding). And maybe it would force scientists to become better communicators. I realize it would be naive to believe that great reviews would emerge spontaneously from all comers even among qualified scientists but I imagine this would be a tightly moderated forum.
TG