One step closer to the open review system of the future
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REVIEWS AND REVISIONS MADE PUBLIC
There is unnecessary secrecy around the review process. Forward-thinkers, such as those at Nature, have experimented with open peer review, but ultimately decided the world was not ready. However, large advances sometimes happen via small steps, and a toned-down version might open minds to open review.
The good people over at the Journal of Consumer Research are now making public what they call teaching sets(*), which are simply manuscripts and their accompanying reviews and revisions published for all to see:
http://ejcr.org/teaching-sets/teachingsets.html
While JCR’s idea is to “to make it easier for professors and their students/advisees to discuss the review process” (**), DSN thinks that opening up reviews in this way has an added benefit: it gives the world a privileged view into what a sample of informed readers really think. Do this long enough and we might approach something like scientific communication and advancement.
ADDENDUM:
In chatting with JCR after making this post, DSN has discovered that they too are not crazy about the name “teaching sets”. DSN is hereby soliciting better names for these things, which it will pass on to JCR. Some ideas:
Public Reviews
Open Reviews
Reviews Made Public
Declassified Reviews
Review Process Histories
Review Process Paper Trails
{your idea here}
Send your creative genius to dan at dangoldstein.com
(*) Decision Science News does not like the name “teaching sets”
(**) Personal communcation
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