Review your betters

Nature, in tune with the zeitgeist, is trialing the wider outsourcing of peer review, just like the USPTO is about to, and just like Biology Direct has been doing all year.

From 5 June 2006, authors may opt to have their submitted manuscripts posted publicly for comment.

Any scientist may then post comments, provided they identify themselves. Once the usual confidential peer review process is complete, the public 'open peer review' process will be closed. Editors will then read all comments on the manuscript and invite authors to respond. At the end of the process, as part of the trial, editors will assess the value of the public comments.

At the close of the trial, we will assess the value of public comments overall as well as the practicalities of their inclusion on a longer-term basis. We will publish an account of the trial and our conclusions.

That's a smart move. No feedback mechanism though, which opens up a closed circle in the current system in which you can more or less figure out the effects of your review on a paper's fate. Will the commenters comment endlessly on the earlier commenters rather than on the preprint? Hope it works out. They could be braver: Nature, I dare you to remove the editorial oversight, to let the wisdom or madness of the crowd be the final arbiter for an issue or two.