I found this via Nascent. Read all about it at Nature.com. Chris also blogs about the article
I respect Chris Anderson a lot. His concept of the Long Tail is something that I have come to appreciate and embrace. His insight into what constitutes scientific peer review makes for some interesting reading. Chris certainly knows all about the “Wisdom of Crowds”. First of all I like his distinction between pre-filtering and post-filtering. I am still not convinced what constitutes a peer. In more specialized areas, papers might get buried underneath the avalanche of papers on global warming, nanomachines and evolution. There has to be a way to normalize ratings and not just making things a popularity contest. That publishers such as Nature, PLoS experimenting with alternate approaches should be lauded, even if we disagree with the model, because it is at least a start. I have a feeling that things will work out in the not too distant future.
Further Reading:
Nature takes the lead
Chris Anderson
The Omics World
Technorati Tags: Peer Review, Science, Publication, Journals, Nature Magazine, Chris Anderson, Wisdom of Crowds, Long Tail
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[...] At last count (two days back), there were four papers submitted for this open peer review and one has received a comment. For the interested readers, there is also an online debate forum future of scientific peer review in the web age at the Nature website itself. Some opinions about this open peer review process can be seen here in Chris Anderson’s blog, there at the Deepak Singh’s blog and elsewhere at the Omic World. [...]
[...] Nature is carrying an editorial on the recently held Scifoo camp, an offshoot of Tim O’Reilly’s foo camps. Some day, I would love to participate in an event like this, if for no other reason than to find out what some of the leading thinkers in a field talk about. At this one, it was no surprise that peer review was a big part of the debate. We all await more detailed reports on the discussions that were held [...]