An example of progressive peer-review in a scientific journal – Katatrepsis

"Almost all scientific papers are peer-reviewed.  This means (typically) that between one and three researchers from the same field as the paper’s topic offer (sometimes constructive) criticism and a judgement as to whether or not the paper merits publication.  There is a strange ritual to it, whereby the authors submit, the reviewers critique, then the authors rebut or acquiesce to the reviewers’ demands, while the editor acts as ringmaster and makes the final decision.  The main problems are that (i) there is a lack of dialogue (you only get a very small number of opportunities to engage), and (ii) your manuscript is in the hands of a very small number of reviewers with their own particular foibles and hobby horses. A solution to this is to have either (i) open pre-publication peer-review, or (ii) open post-publication peer-review.  This means that the paper is discussed by more people and in a medium which encourages dialogue, such as a blog comments section.  Even better, each element of the dialogue can feature as a subsection of the paper itself, making each section citable in its own right.  This encourages reviewers and commenters alike to produce high-quality criticisms and has been implemented in some journals. Here’s an example of the process in action in a particularly controversial climate paper at Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics:..."