From: <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Wed, 6 Jun 2012 10:41:08 +0000

Dear Jim,

As it happens we are currently launching a journal across biology and
Medicine called F1000 Research (http://f1000research.com) which will
indeed experiment with completely opening up the formal peer review
process to avoid many problems with peer review, including the one you
eluded to below of not knowing whether an article has been rejected
numerous times before finally being accepted in a 'peer-reviewed'
journal.

The idea behind F1000 Research is to provide scientists with a
far-reaching alternative to existing journal publishing models and
will address four significant issues:

1. Speed. We will offer immediate publication, following a brief
internal review. All submissions will initially be labelled as
'awaiting peer review'.

2. Peer review. Submissions will go into a rapid, formal, and
completely open peer review process post-publication. Our intention
here is to eliminate the delays and injustices that too often arise in
the standard closed peer review system.

3. Research types. A wide variety of types of research findings will
be accepted, from traditional articles to null/negative findings, to
replicate/refutation findings.

4. Primary data. We will promote sharing, publication and refereeing
of datasets, in the form of separate data papers, to foster
collaboration and accelerate scientific discovery.

Although we plan to formally launch towards the end of the year, we do
plan to start publishing a few articles starting in the next few weeks
to test some of these novel processes. There are more details of our
initial plan at
http://f1000research.com/2012/01/30/f1000-research-join-us-and-shape-the-future-of-scholarly-communication-2/,
and further information will be posted shortly at
Http://f1000research.com.  We have received extensive support from all
areas of biology and medicine, including our large prestigious
Advisory Panel: http://f1000research.com/advisory-panel/.

We are aiming to develop this initiative very much in consultation
with the relevant communities and so any thoughts or comments on the
plans would be very much welcomed.

Kind regards
Rebecca

Rebecca Lawrence, PhD
Publisher, F1000 Research
FACULTY of 1000
http://F1000.com

[log in to unmask]
Skype: r.lawrence1
Faculty of 1000
Middlesex House, 34-42 Cleveland St
London W1T 4LB, UK


-----Original Message-----
From: "James J. O'Donnell" <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Sun, 3 Jun 2012 14:39:56 -0400

There is one experiment with transparency in scholarly communication
that I have not seen.  I'd be glad to hear if there are any cases
where it has been tried and to hear comments on the possibility.

The most confidential part of the process of "public"ation is peer
review.  An author submits an article to a journal and it is accepted
or rejected; if rejected, the author goes elsewhere and repeats the
effort to win acceptance.  Journals boast of their acceptance (i.e.,
rejection) rates.  Something I would like to know - but now cannot
find out, when I read an article - is whether and how often and by
whom the same piece has been rejected.  Many editors would be glad to
have that information about individual items and "average prior
rejections/article" would be an interesting metric of the quality of a
journal.

Publishing this information would also allow for validation of the
peer review system:  articles with high citation counts and multiple
rejections would be interesting in one way, but it's likely in most
fields that the reverse would be the near-universal norm.  Who would
not benefit from such transparency?  If we are to mandate access to
results of research -- is this not one of the results?

Jim O'Donnell
Georgetown