Treasure or Trash? Helping students distinguish online gold from online guff
eLife peer review alpsp talk
1. Peer review in a digital
environment
Mark Patterson
eLife
ALPSP Seminar, November 20th, 2012
2. Open access is just
one part of a
broader transition
http://www.flickr.com/photos/anandham/4499539060/
3. The goals of
peer review
• Assess technical merits of
Open access is just work
• Assess likely significance
one part of a of work
broader transition
http://www.columbia.edu/cu/21stC/issue-1.1/peer.htm
4. How does peer review
work? The goals of peer
review
• Assess technical merits of
Open access is just work
• Assess likely significance
one part of a of work
broader transition
http://www.scienceforseo.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/04/peerreview.jpg
6. Is peer
review The goals of peer
broken? review
Open access is just
one part of a
broader transition
http://the-political-ear.com/?p=595
7. Experiments in peer review
• Increasing transparency
– Non-anonymous
– Exposing the process
• Broadening participation
– Public peer review before publication
– Post-publication assessment/metrics
• Changing the question
– Publish first then filter
9. Open peer review
Reviewers are not
anonymous
Reviewers are
not anonymous
Complete
submission
history published
10. Open peer review (2)
Reviewers can
remain anonymous
Cross-referee
commenting
Complete
submission
history published
11. eLife editorial process
Swift triage
Full
submission Peer review
Consultation Amongst reviewers before decision
Decision
letter Consolidate feedback, published
Revision
Limit rounds of revision
decision
16. • Founded 2001
• Publishes ~800
papers per year
• 20% papers
receive
comment from
community
http://www.frontiersin.org/Computational_Neuroscience/10.3389/fncom.2012.00033/full
17.
18. “Facilitating sustained and rigorous
analysis of evidence and theory is
the most rigorous form of peer
review.”
24. PLOS Papers Funded by the Wellcome Trust
Location of the first authors for 1961 articles funded by the Wellcome Trust (blue = MOPs, green = MRC, dark grey = all other).
Acknowledgment
Martin Fenner, PLOS