Apropos of Rex’s recent post on the so so misguided actions of the AAA, here is an excellent commentary on an experiment in “open peer review” by biologists. The people involved in Biology Direct have started an experiment in completely open peer review– all of the reviewers are named, as are the authors, authors suggest reviewers and the only criteria for submission is that the author find three people willing to review the piece. The people responsible for this experiment are cautiously optimistic about the results (it started only in Jan. of this year), but they have managed to get a number of well known biologists to sign on, and enthusiastically so.

One of the main and most spurious compaints of the recent AAP letter opposing the FFRPA is that it would “adversly affect the peer review system.” I think this experiment is exactly the kind of real-world refutation of such claims that people should be paying attention to in this debate. Even if it only sort of works– i’m pretty sure it will be 100% better to have an open access, open peer review system with drawbacks, than an unsustainable, closed access, anoymous review system with serious and unaddressed flaws…