Does Science Need 'Open Evaluation' Before 'Open Access?'

In an editorial accompanying an ebook titled "Beyond open access: visions for open evaluation of scientific papers by post-publication peer review," Nikolaus Kriegeskorte argues that scientists, not publishers, are in the best position to develop a fair evaluation process for scientific papers.

The ebook, published today in Frontiers, compiles 18 peer-reviewed articles that lay out detailed visions on how an transparent, open evaluation (OE) system could work for the benefit of all science. This transparency is paramount because the evaluation process is the central steering mechanism of science and influences public policy as well.

The authors are from a wide variety of disciplines including neuroscience, psychology, computer science, artificial intelligence, medicine, molecular biology, chemistry, and economics. "Peer reviews should be made public information, like the scientific papers themselves. In a lot of ways, the network of scientific publications is similar to a neural network. Each paper or peer review could be seen as a neuron with excitatory and inhibitory connections, and this information is vital in judging the value of its results," says Kriegeskorte, researcher at the University of Cambridge...