Slay peer review ‘sacred cow’, says former BMJ chief

Thanks Paul, as co-founder of ScienceOpen (there seems to be a typo in your post) and as researcher who also worked more than a decade in publishing industry I am fascinated about Jan Velterop's concept. We are happy to let it fly!

In my own specialist field, I've had some very good suggestions from reviewers, especially from top end specialist journal (like J Gen Physiol and J Physiol in my area). Glamour journals have not done as well. Nevertheless, in general, I have to agree with Richard Smith. It's become quite obvious that any paper, however bad, can now be published in a journal that claims to be peer-reviewed. As a badge of respectability. "peer-reviewed" now means nothing whatsoever. There will never be enough competent reviewers for the vast number of papers that are being published now. Georgina Mace says "abandoning peer review would make scientific literature no more reliable than the blogosphere". But that is already the case. You have to read the paper to find out if it's any good. All papers should first appear on archive sites, where feedback can be gathered before eventual publication. And when published, all papers should have open comments at the end. It's already happening with a rapidly increasing number of journals (like eLife and Royal Society Open Science). That would mean that it would be essential that people judging you for jobs and promotion would have to read the papers rather than relying on near-useless surrogates like impact factors and citations. Of course the amount of rubbish would be large, but no larger that it already is. And above all, it would make publishing very much cheaper. There would be no more huge charges for open access.

Peer review is as good as our peerage system is :) As it is the dominant filter that precedes scientific publication at this time, most of us who have tried to communicate our findings and research outcomes will know by experience that reviews can be insightful, helpful, right, or the opposite. For a few years I have seen the process both ways, serving as an Editor at PLOS ONE - each time I receive a good review, I rejoice and use it to communicate with the authors effectively; on other occasions I struggle to find a balance between being fair to the authors, my duty as Editor to the Journal and the scientific community, etc. My first point is - and PLOS ONE exemplifies this very well - that who is the Editor and who are the Peer Reviewer matters: generalising for reasons of debate is dangerous. My second point, follows from the above, and relates to alternatives. One issue that I feel we see more of and which is corrupting science, is the venues where you can pay-and-publish (with a varying degree of "peer review"). Scrapping the requirement for peer review, is likely to make things worse in this respect. The need to read the papers should never go away (in this I am concerned with the intriguing suggestion by Douglas Kell that computers may do the reading and provide useful summaries for us in the future). However, equally relevant is the question of where one browses for titles and abstracts from where to chose further reading - and how one choses from competing calls. I would suggest that good publications venues, offer quality to their readership. It is a sad matter that so much of the publication industry is dominated by financial issues.

Reviewers are human too and sometimes susceptible to prejudice and ignorance. Would it be possible for the model that Wiki uses to be replicated in academic publishing? This means that research outputs will be open to a wider audience and but scrutinised in a more democratic way whilst maintaining academic rigour.