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The BMJ now has a system of open peer review. This means that reviewers have to sign their reports, saying briefly who they are and where they work. We also ask reviewers to declare to the editors any competing interests that might relate to articles we have asked them to review, and we take these into account when considering reviewers' comments. When such competing interests are too great reviewers usually decline the assignment. Open peer review does not mean that authors should feel able to contact reviewers directly to discuss their reports; all queries should still be directed through the editorial office.

We will send you a decision letter and report from the meeting as soon as possible; usually within a few days but longer if we have asked for an additional detailed report from the statistics editor or another reviewer. The report will list the names of everyone who took part in the discussion about your article.

The author’s manuscript after eligibility check (step 1) made by the journal’s editors enters the traditional double blind peer review (step 2). Articles accepted for publication are then available for an open comment peer review (step 3) for a given period (at least 30 days) during which the journal’s editors solicit scholars in the field to post comments.  All registered users to the journals are therefore able to comment on and to discuss the accepted articles published in pre-print format. This part of the peer review process is moderated by the journals editors. Authors are able to revise their articles for final publication in the light of both forms of review (double blind and open).

In the first stage, manuscripts that pass a rapid pre-screening (access review) are immediately published as 'discussion papers' on the journal's website. They are then subject to interactive public discussion for a period of 8 weeks, during which the comments of designated reviewers, additional comments by other interested members of the scientific community, and the authors' replies are published alongside the discussion paper. Reviewers can choose to sign their comments or remain anonymous, but comments by other scientists must be signed.

Open peer review means that, firstly, the reviewers' names are included on the peer review reports, and secondly that, if the manuscript is published, the reports are made available online along with the final version of the manuscript. The published article will provide a link to its 'pre-publication history', which lists all the versions of the manuscript, all the signed reviews, and all responses to the reviewers since the submission of the manuscript until its publication.

Editors complain about frequent refusals from potential referees, low quality and brevity of reviews, lack of engagement with the papers' arguments and evidence, and the ever-increasing time it takes referees to produce their reports.

Graduate students must be trained and socialized to become good reviewers. Reviewers must learn and accept the role of general reader.

One-month of open-review, during which registered users of the journal platform will be enabled to comment on and to discuss the selected and peer reviewed papers. Authors will be able to use these comments and discussions to revise their final submission for publication.

Could the peer review of the future resemble collaborative blogging

"democratic production of knowledge."

Acceptance was the norm, not the exception

accepted by journals hosted by industry titans Sage and Elsevier

by journals published by prestigious academic institutions such as Kobe University in Japan.

June 9, 2006

We need to develop flexible but clear guidelines for recognizing and rewarding public scholarship and artistic production.

the mechanisms of publishing come to stand in for the larger and more complex processes of creating, vetting, and circulating knowledge

if we examine the work that humanists are doing—in something like the way that scholars in the field of Science and Technology Studies (STS) have done for science—by looking at their culture of material practices, then the familiar framework of “publishing” does not serve us well

to publish this scholarship requires that we add some new dimensions to our ideas of “publishing.”