Open and Shut?: Open peer review at Collabra: Q&A with UC Press Director Alison Mudditt

"Earlier this year University of California Press (UC Press) launched a new open access mega journal called Collabra. Initially focusing on three broad disciplinary areas (life and biomedical sciences, ecology and environmental science, and social and behavioural sciences), the journal will expand into other disciplines at a later date. One of the distinctive features of Collabra is that its authors can choose to have the peer review reports signed by the reviewers and published alongside their papers, making them freely available for all to read — a process usually referred to as open peer review ... Since Collabra is offering open peer review on a voluntary basis it remains unclear how many papers will be published in this way, but the signs are encouraging: the authors of the first paper published by Collabra opted for open peer review, as have the majority of authors whose papers are currently being processed by the publisher. Moreover, no one has yet refused to be involved because open peer review is an option, and no one has expressed a concern about it.  Collabra’s first paper—Implicit Preferences for Straight People over Lesbian Women and Gay Men Weakened from 2006 to 2013—was published on 23rd July, and the reviewers’ reports can be found here.  So how does open peer review work in practice and what issues does it raise? To find out I emailed some questions to UC Press Director Alison Mudditt, whose answers are published below ..."