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