jueves, 2 de agosto de 2012

The end of the traditional peer-review system?


It’s clear that peer-review process is totally necessary to ensure the quality of the research publications and has so far been a valid option and, as I think, it could still be valid for certain areas of research such humanities, maybe. 

Nowadays, in the age of internet and new technologies, it's possible and necessary to share results as soon as possible especially in some research areas such as health, technology, … 

However, as I said before, I think that peer-review is a essential process to ensure the quality of the research results, but has a serious problem, the delay. Delays (months or even years) caused by repeated rejection of the publication and the generation of several versions of the paper, in many cases, until it’s accepted and published. 

Anyway, I don't think the solution is to publish without any type of review as we have now accomplished in OpenAccess mode. I have read recently about F1000 program (Open Peer Review) and I think that it’s a good solution:

F1000 Research  is a far-reaching alternative Open Access publishing program in biology and medicine. It challenges traditional scholarly publishing models by defining new standards for:   

Speed: Immediate publication following a rapid internal review,  
Peer Review: Fast, formal, and completely open peer review post publication,  
Data Publication: F1000 Research promotes publication, refereeing and sharing of full datasets to encourage collaboration and accelerate scientific discovery,  
Publishing Good Science: We support the publication of all sound research, including work that can be hard to publish in traditional journals.

In this way, the researchers can publish their articles almost immediately to increase the science dissemination in an Open Access way. The article is published immediately as ‘awaiting peer review’ and sent to 3-5 expert referees. These referees, must say if the article ‘seems ok’ as soon as possible, within 2 weeks, and then provide a more standard report, within two weeks more. In this two status, the results are published immediately in an open way. F1000 program also encourage the reuse of the results.

I really think it’s a good alternative to the traditional peer-review.

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