Journal Nature ends open peer review trial

Journal Nature ends open peer review trial

The editors of Nature have terminated a trial run for open peer review. A comment on the journal's website says: "Despite enthusiasm for the concept, open peer review was not widely popular, either among authors or by scientists invited to comment."

On 1 June, 2006, Nature launched a pilot project to test open peer review. The intention was to explore the interest of researchers in a particular model of open peer review, as authors and/or reviewers. It was also intended to provide Nature's editors and publishers with a test of the practicalities of a potential extension to the traditional procedures of peer review.

During the open review period, editors offered authors of manuscripts that passed an initial editorial screening an option to post their papers online for open, signed reviews, while it was simultaneously being evaluated in the conventional blind review blind process. The report on the website provides statistics and details about the open review experiment, and concludes as follows:

Despite the significant interest in the trial, only a small proportion of authors opted to participate. There was a significant level of expressed interest in open peer review among those authors who opted to post their manuscripts openly and who responded after the event, in contrast to the views of the editors. A small majority of those authors who did participate received comments, but typically very few, despite significant web traffic. Most comments were not technically substantive. Feedback suggests that there is a marked reluctance among researchers to offer open comments.

Nature and its publishers will continue to explore participative uses of the web. But for now at least, we will not implement open peer review.

Source: http://www.nature.com/nature/peerreview/debate/nature05535.html