I’m all for putting together a small movement of reviewers who demand publication of their reviews. Even if there aren’t enough of us to create any real pressure on journal editorial boards we would at least raise awareness about the issue. That will create momentum. Snowball effect. yeah! I propose we start with a website and a short and simple manifesto that supporters can reference. Maybe also gather a set of founding members for the idea and maintain a registration list for supporters.

But one thing still nags me… What to do about the work that goes into reviewing papers that ultimately never get published? Should the reviews be published anyway? And the paper published along with a public REJECTED designation?

I’d go one step further in peer review reform: I’d require publication of referee comments _alongside_ the originally submitted manuscript. For one thing, this would make referee comments more understandable (presuming the final manuscript fixed the problems). But more importantly, I think it would stop people from submitting unfinished work. Unlike you, I frequently end up thinking that the authors rushed to submission, figuring they’d get a chance to revise and do the work in the meantime. Or they just submit unrefined junk hoping it will slip by. I think they’d stop doing this if they knew their original work would be published.

It seems to me that reasoned arguments like yours to overhaul or abolish pre-publication peer review are ramping up quickly over the past couple years. Maybe it’s time to form a coalition of referees and make demands. This would actually be easy. For example, we get a group of people to agree on some condition, such as: we will only serve as referee if our signed comments are published along side the final manuscript (that’s a weaker demand than I want). of course, most publishers won’t agree to this, but if we stick to our guns: hey, less work for us! Eventually, people will see the wisdom of our way and join us and force change. OK, maybe I’m dreaming, but it seems nice. Actually, what’s preventing me from making that my own ultimatum? Nothing really, my tenure committee would never find out that I was refusing all my referee requests, except for PLoS ONE.

OK, thanks for the great post!

That said, people who have fear of writing something negative about a colleagues work need to grow a spine. The several times so far that I’ve signed a negative review it’s turned out pretty well. In one case the authors contacted me and we had a very positive discussion about why I came to the conclusions in the review. If non-anonymous review were the norm most people would acclimate to having a beer with someone who provided a candid evaluation of their work without unleashing a drunken torrent of insults.

Mostly we know at least superficially the others working in the field, and consider some as friends with whom we like to go out for a beer at conferences.

When giving anonymous reports, we can keep on going out for a beer or two occasionally and still provide honest criticism of each other’s work.