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I agree is a step in the right direction but also think people overestimate how much you can learn from reviews of *published* papers (I mean learn about those papers, not the process itself; I agree metasciencec will have a field day with those).
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Dorothy Bishop
@deevybee.bsky.social
it’s a great development- I’ve been banging on about this for years. But it’s most useful for journals where there’s reason to suspect peer review can be compromised, so let’s hope they extend it to Scientific Reports
June 17, 2025 at 3:14 PM
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Oh. I originally misread it as "Nature journalS", as in "journals published by the group". Coz indeed it's the low-tier journals that would benefit from it the most.
Although reading reviews from Nature itself may be the most exciting, for outsiders. High-stakes publishing is interesting!
I imagine referees and authors will write these very differently now that they are set to be public.
When I was still in academia I was always signing mine, and advocated for transparency, for writing as if they are always public. I was also lucky and rarely got scathing well-written reviews: they were mostly either helpful, or stupid and ridiculous. So I think it's a good direction overall.
(But I'm also biased, as I'm never afraid to disagree. I read online somewhere that some people find it hard to disagree, especially with those higher up, who have power over them. I can't easily relate to that, but yeah, a bit of re-alignment may be required)
It's not going to make navigating academic politics any easier, your personal experience notwithstanding.
Maybe my </s> tag wasn't obvious ;)
Still, I think it's a better development. I have written about it more when I had stakes in the game, but I think ideally reviews should be both signed and open. Openness, required, signedness - optional, but encouraged.
And an army of data science students sifting through the data, identifying field leaders writing nastiest reviews, kindest reviews, not writing reviews at all... Who is unusually helpful? Who endorses bad science a bit too often? Transparency is good, I believe.
The only question is whether they will disclose how some buzz papers are being published without peer review.
That those papers have no review is generally a myth, esp. in journals with internal oversight. Would be curious to know which one rubbed you the wrong way, though #OverlyCuriousEditor
The one and only Nature (and some other prestige jorunals, say The Lancet, which never disclosed the "three dates" and how PR was performed on the Surgisphere manuscript). By PR I mean external PR. I am sure Nature Com' always perform PR, though a crappy one considering their level of retraction.
For example, I want to read Schön's manuscript reviews en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sch%C3%...
Schoen, meh. Ranga Dias tho. The second paper is barely 2 years old and was funded by NSF and DOE, so presumably someone could ask for reviews
thru FOIA. Dunno if anyone tried.
Interesting, is it a "governmental" document? I am not sure FOAI goes beyond the Federal Government scope. Anyway, I am sure that we won't have to wait more than a year before we get a beautiful case (I expect Nature did that to share the burden of responsibility...)