Dear Christian and dear all,

I agree with you Christian in that something different to standard peer
review should be done in a open research society. However, I think that
the following points are important:

1) Peer review is old as modern techno-science, and possibly we could
not get the journals indexed if we do not adhere to "some form" of peer
review. Removal of peer-review would make the journal be rejected in
some countries, e.g. in Spain. :-(

2) The view that many review the many is attracting, but what would be
the concrete review process (the concrete steps and time frame)? The
wikipedia is a good model (even though the information put there, at
least in the spanish site for politics, is clearly biased) but for long-
running reviews, not for publications that are supposed to be fixed
after acceptance and require fast review for the attribution of
priority in research results. So I think the model is not directly
useful as is, but that it must be "tailored".

I have some ideas about alternatives to standard process that are "more
or less" compatible with the traditional view (so that the best of both
worlds could be mantained):

1) Rotating and large editorial boards. Rotation can be established as
a principle from the beginning, so that it becomes a standard of the
journal, and it gives chances for more people to collaborate.

2) The peer-review process could be done in two fashions:
- "Normal" peer review, but with fast, "guaranteed" turnaround.
- "Developmental" review, in which the author submits a *draft* and it
is reviewed informally by many. Then, from the informal review, it is
decided o go on to submit a full-prepared manuscript. This is specially
useful for "special issues" and also as a way for new ideas.

3) The time to review will be fixed for reviewers, and failure to meet
the deadlines will eventually result in exclusion. That is, review
requires a strong commitmment, and I feel that this is closer to open
source, in which leaders are usually hard workers.

I believe that the shift should be that of giving guarantees to authors
that their submissions will be properly reviewed in a fixed, short
time, which gives them the opportunity to sumbit quickly to other
journal is the result is negative. I have many times suffered
supposedly "fast" processes that end in waiting a year to obtain very
weak reviews. This of course must be avoided by all means.

All the best,
Miguel Angel.

--- In open-research-society@yahoogroups.com, "Christian Wagner"
<christian@w...> wrote:
> I have read with interest the various arguments on the editorial /
> journal system and process.
>
> My argument, to reiterate, is to brake away from traditional views of
> editorial boards and such.
>
> An open research society should, in my opinion, adopt more the
> principles of opensource, including a peer review process where the
> many review the many.
>
> Some of you may know the wikipedia (http://wikipedia.org), an online
> encyclopedia which is entirely peer reviewed and revised, without an
> editorial review board as an intermediary that slows down the
> publication process. This model, and the model of slashdot.org or
> kuro5hin.org (as mentioned earlier) would seem more appropriate to me,
> to produce a paradigm shift.