Peer Review: ALTERNATIVE

[Keith Robison]

William Tivol (tivol at news.wadsworth.org) wrote:
: Keith Robison (robison at lipid.harvard.edu) wrote:

: : [snip]  Those who are true believers in NPR or OPR journals
: : are the people who believe in the concept, and would therefore
: : not be worried about trying it out.

: Dear Keith,
: 	The journal Scanning Electron Microscopy (now named Scanning, I think)
: has used OPR for some years now.  They publish a "discussion with reviewers"
: section after each paper, which adds significantly to the information in the
: paper.  I think this kind of review system could be used in other journals to
: great, positive effect.

I agree -- to me this sounds like the best system of the sorts 
that have been discussed here -- have the journal editors &
reviewers work together to exerpt the key parts of the review.

Another growing mechanism to increase the volume of feedback
on articles is the on-line letters section -- I just noticed
that Biotechniques has joined Trends in the Biochemical Sciences
with a bionet.journal_name.letters group.  This is also a big
positive, and it would be nice to see some of the biggies
join in (I'd certainly be interested; I'm 0/3 in the Scientific
Correspondence section of Nature).

Keith Robison
Harvard University
Department of Cellular and Developmental Biology
Department of Genetics / HHMI

robison at mito.harvard.edu