This seems useful. But do you ask the authors for permission to review and give them an easy way out? Academic peer review is for good reasons usually non-public. The prospect of having one’s work reviewed in public seems likely to be extremely emotionally uncomfortable for some authors and may discourage them from writing.
Putting aside how people feel for the moment (I’ll come back to it), I don’t think peer-review should be private, and I think anyone publishing work in an openly readable forum where other researchers are expected to interact would value a thoughtful review of their work.
That being said, you’re probably right that at least notifying the authors before publication is a good policy. We sort of did that for the first two reviews, in the sense of literally asking people what they wanted to get reviews for, but we should make it a habit.
Thanks—I agree there’s value to public peer review. Personally I’d go further than notifying authors and instead ask for permission. We already have a problem where many people (including notably highly accomplished authors) feel discouraged from posting due to the fear of losing reputation. Worse, your friends will actually read reviews of your work, unlike OpenReview. And I wouldn’t want to make this worse by implicitly making authors opt into a public peer review if that makes sense.
There are also some differences between forums and academia. Forums allow people to share unpolished work and see how the community reacts. I worry that highly visible public reviews may discourage some authors from posting this work, unless it’s obvious that they won’t get a highly visible negative review for their off-the-cuff thoughts without opting into it. Which seems doable within your (very useful) approach. I agree there’s a fine line here; just want to point out that not everyone is emotionally ready for this.
This seems useful. But do you ask the authors for permission to review and give them an easy way out? Academic peer review is for good reasons usually non-public. The prospect of having one’s work reviewed in public seems likely to be extremely emotionally uncomfortable for some authors and may discourage them from writing.
Putting aside how people feel for the moment (I’ll come back to it), I don’t think peer-review should be private, and I think anyone publishing work in an openly readable forum where other researchers are expected to interact would value a thoughtful review of their work.
That being said, you’re probably right that at least notifying the authors before publication is a good policy. We sort of did that for the first two reviews, in the sense of literally asking people what they wanted to get reviews for, but we should make it a habit.
Thanks for the suggestion.
Thanks—I agree there’s value to public peer review. Personally I’d go further than notifying authors and instead ask for permission. We already have a problem where many people (including notably highly accomplished authors) feel discouraged from posting due to the fear of losing reputation. Worse, your friends will actually read reviews of your work, unlike OpenReview. And I wouldn’t want to make this worse by implicitly making authors opt into a public peer review if that makes sense.
There are also some differences between forums and academia. Forums allow people to share unpolished work and see how the community reacts. I worry that highly visible public reviews may discourage some authors from posting this work, unless it’s obvious that they won’t get a highly visible negative review for their off-the-cuff thoughts without opting into it. Which seems doable within your (very useful) approach. I agree there’s a fine line here; just want to point out that not everyone is emotionally ready for this.