Presented to the 20th International Conference on Electronic Publishing (ELPUB2016), Goettingen, Germany, 8th June 2016 by Tony Ross-Hellauer
Abstract: Openness in peer review is no longer a terra incognita. However, there remains a need for further experimentation and careful evaluation of its advantages and disadvantages in practice. OpenAIRE, the European digital infrastructure for Open Scholarship, offers a unique environment for such experiments. This paper describes the design and early results of three such experiments developed in close collaboration with selected publishing and repository communities.
OA Conference Proceedings: http://ebooks.iospress.nl/publication/42901
Engler and Prantl system of classification in plant taxonomy
Peer Review on the Move from Closed to Open
1. Peer Review on the Move
from Closed to Open
Tony Ross-Hellauer
State and University Library,
University of Göttingen
Goettingen, 8th June, #elpub2016
@tonyR_H
2. 2
OpenAIRE
Dec. 2009 – Nov. 2012
OpenAIREplus
Dec. 2011 – Dec. 2014
OpenAIRE2020
Jan. 2015 – Jun. 2018
Now in our third project phase …
3. EC Open Access Mandate
Progression
FP7 (2008)
• 20% programme areas
• Deposit in Repositories
• APC payments during project
• ERC OA Guidelines
Horizon 2020 (2014)
• 100% programme areas
• Deposit in Repositories
• APCs during and after project
• Open Data Pilot (100% from 2017)
3
4. 4
Human
Network
50 Partners from every EU country, and beyond
Data centres, universities, libraries, repositories
Digital
Network
… fosters the social and technical links
that enable Open Science in Europe and beyond.
5. Human Infrastructure
• Local support for Europe’s diverse research landscape
5
Human support network
• 33 expert nodes all over
Europe to helping with:
• OA training and support
• (OA) policy alignment
• Technical assistance
• Outreach to international
community via COAR
7. Result: Integrated Scientific Information
System
• 13.9 million unique
publications
• 7 million authors
• 690+ data providers
• 202,000 publications linked
to projects from 5 funders
• 5,500 datasets linked to
publications
• 35,000 organizations
7
8. • Support the Universal OA mandate for all projects
• Run post-grant funding pilot for OA publications
• Support the Open Data Pilot
8
+ Research and development into new trends in
scholarly communication
• Linked Open Data
• Data Citation
• Literature-Data Integration
• Legal issues in Open Data
• Metrics for Open Access
• Open Peer Review
New in
OpenAIRE2020 …
Open Peer Review
9. From Open Access to
Open Science
9
Aim: To open up scientific processes and
products from all levels to everyone …
• Open Access (publications, data,
software, educational resources)
• Open Methodology (open notebooks,
study preregistration)
• Citizen Science
• Open Evaluation / Open Peer Review
10. Why Open Peer Review?
• Time
• Accountability
• Bias
• Incentive
• Wasted effort
Picture credit: AJ Cann, CC BY-SA 2.0
Problems with traditional peer review ...
11. Open Peer Review, broadly defined …
11
Traditionally, peer review is ...
• Anonymous: reviewers unknown to authors, or both authors
and reviewers unknown to each other
• Selective: reviewers selected by editors
• Opaque: neither the process nor the reviews are made public
Openness in peer review can refer to ...
• Absence of anonymity (open identity)
• Self-selecting reviewers (open participation)
• Public processes and reviews (open access)
12. Encouraging
experimentation …
• Use OpenAIRE infrastructure to seed
experimentation
• Stakeholder survey (to come)
• Call for Tenders in 2015
• Small grants
• Investigate how OPR might integrate with
OpenAIRE
• Provide case studies for wider evaluation
• Encourage technological experimentation
12
13. • Francophone environmental
sciences journal
• Using the blog platform
hypotheses.org for OPR
• Using hypothes.is for open
commentary
• Treating OPR as a social rather than
a technological problem
13
14. OpenEdition (2)
• Tone: Overwhelmingly cordial and constructive debate, but
authors and referees reported difficulties finding the right
tone
• Ethical question: One author asked for text to be removed
after receiving critical review
• Mediation in Open Commentary: Just because you build
it, does not mean they will come! (Mediation needed to
finding commentators willing to engage)
14
15. • Incentivizing post-publication
peer reviews (with $$$!)
• Capturing reviews from
“journal clubs”
• Platform for reviews of Zenodo
content
• Author survey
• 15
19. Open Peer Review
Module for repositories
• OPR plug-in for (DSpace) repositories to convert them into
functional evaluation platforms
• Includes published reviews, disclosed identities, reviewer
reputation system
• Complete code, with full documentation, available on Github
under an open license:
• https://github.com/arvoConsultores/Open-Peer-Review-Module
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22. Future directions:
A call for common standards
• Uncouple peer review from “publishing”
• Repositories are more than pre-/post-print servers!
• Federate OPR services
• We need to agree:
• What OPR is (standardization of vocabulary)
• How we measure its effectiveness (standardization of
experimentation)
• How we describe it for machines (standardization of metadata)
22