three cheers for sunshine

A couple of months back I briefly mentioned the idea of double-blind peer review as one I found somewhat intriguing. In the linked discussion I wrote the following comment:

I’m in favor of double-blind review (and editors) for a simple reason: the only people that stand to lose from double-blind review are those that benefit from bias of one sort or another currently.

...

As an author, I know I’ve had papers triaged from journals that I just wasn’t “in” with, because they’ve published less careful work in the same area by people with connections to the editorial board.

Shorter this: to be anti-DBR is to be objectively pro-bias.

I still stand by that, but today I've had my first encounter with not only a different "alternative" review process, but in fact the exact opposite: open peer review, which is the practice of Biology Direct.

The reviewers are identified (from the start), and their comments and the authors' responses are included as part of the final publication. As a reader, I find this very, very useful. And the quality of reviewer comments is--perhaps unsurprisingly--quite a bit better than the slapdash style of criticism I find far too common in the (anonymous) peer review process.