Open Review

I am not familiar with the open review trial from 2006.  Does lack of perceived benefits constitute failure?  It seems that if a topic made it to the review process that several people must have deemed it worthy of critique.  Perhaps there was lack of publicity or a lack of familiarity with a new approach to reviewing?

I disagree that open review is already being practiced, because, typically, conference and workshops tend to attract–and be attended by–similar-field academic peers.  The beauty of open review is that people from all disciplines can offer their thoughts. Great improvements can result from scientists’ unique insight for humanities scholars (and vice versa). This sort of academic intermingling has been stymied by the requirement of physical attendance at a conference or workshop.  But in a digital environment, the process is easier.

I love the notion of open peer review.  The open review seems to encourage a reinvigorated collegial, scholarly communication, as opposed to the blind reviews which are often done by professors for payment if the journal is large enough.  I do see areas for concern in this process, however.  I am not sure that all professors/reviewers in this current Capitalistic society who reside in an arguably competitive milieu would operate perfectly within a system based upon something quite akin to a process based upon generalized reciprocity.  Are there safety nets, legal or otherwise, for such situations?

I agree that there is considerable benefit to speeding up the publication process; not only does the scholar benefit from a faster turnaround tme, but the community benefits from access to more current information.

This seems to be a concern for me as well.  It would be hard to draw that line, especially in a digital space.  Though I do think it is a good thing to have the world of “peer review” expanded beyond a select group of people, it could pose to be a challenge to maintain quality control on the reviews that are going on.

I have read Planned Obsolescence and plan on actively peer reviewing in the future. This was helpful to read over and I am testing to see if my temporary password will work before I get my feet wet.

Thank you for clarifying the notion of “peer” and its ever-expanding conceptualization in a digital world. I wonder though, if there should still be limitations imposed on this idea. Yes, a closed, fairly isolated peer group seems to inhibit the growth of scholarship and understanding while limiting it to a specific worldview, or as this paragraph suggests, perpetuating singular opinions, but where do we draw the line in terms of who is “qualified” to be considered a peer reviewer?

This raises an interesting point. Since there is more diverse ways of publishing do we need have a review process for both the text and the means that people use to find that text?  There is a ton of material available online. Some is valuable and a lot of it is not.  What if a valuable work that does not show up in popular searches? I would say this is a problem and people should also be reviewing this process along with the content of the digital publication itself. 

I agree with Sandy on the question of revisions by the authors.  Additionally, did the different review processes make a difference with regards to how likely the authors were to make revisions?

It sounds like there is already something of a framework for supporting open review.  I wonder if there is a way to collect a sample of the feedback mentioned in this paragraph to analyze how it can be just as useful as traditional peer review.