peer reviews on-line or peer community?

Nature (or more precisely some researchers through Nature, associated with the UK Wellcome Trust, the US Howard Hughes Medical Institute (hhmo), and ASAPbio) has (have) launched a call for publishing reviews next to accept papers, one way or another, which is something I (and many others) have supported for quite a while. Including for rejected papers, not only because making these reviews public diminishes on principle the time involved in re-reviewing re-submitted papers but also because this should induce authors to revise papers with obvious flaws and missing references (?). Or abstain from re-submitting. Or publish a rejoinder addressing the criticisms. Anything that increases the communication between all parties, as well as the perspectives on a given paper. (This year, NIPS allows for the posting of reviews of rejected submissions, which I find a positive trend!)

In connection with this entry, I am still most sorry that I could not pursue the [superior in my opinion] project of Peer Community in computational statistics, for the time requested by Biometrika editing is just too important [given my current stamina!] for me to handle another journal (or the better alternative to a journal!). I hope someone else can take over the project and create the editorial team needed to run it.

And yet again in connection with this post (!), Andrew posted an announcement about the launch of res3archers.one, an on-line publication forum launched by Harry Crane and Ryan Martin, where the authors handle the peer review process from A to Z, including choosing the reviewers, whose reviews may be public or not, taken into account or not. Once published, the papers are open to comments from users, which constitutes a form of post-publication peer-review. Albeit a weak one in my opinion as the weakness of all such open depositories is the potential lack of interest of and reaction from the community. Incidentally, there is a $10 fee per submission for maintenance. Contrary to Peer Community in… the copyright is partly transferred to res3archers.one, which apparently prevents further publication in another journal.