PLOS One: Peer Review Begone!

One of the things holding back the spread of open access---that is to say, the open publication of scientific articles free for the download---particularly in long-established academic journals and organs for professional associations, is the long-cherished tradition of peer review. Articles that appear in scientific journals such as the Journal of Archaeological Science, Antiquity and American Antiquity are all vetted by at least three scholars who are specialists in the field of the article. This process is supposed to ensure that only quality manuscripts make it to press, but of course, the reality is far from the case, and sometimes articles come across that are later debunked or even found fraudulent. And, it must be said, sometimes the review process can be used to suppress ideas that are non-mainstream.

Peer review costs journals, in time, in labor, and in restricting the number of publishable articles to be included. Those costs are passed along to subscribers, and that is, no joke, one of the main blocks to converting established journals to open access. But now, the open-access Public Library of Science has just begun a new journal called ONE which publishes articles, including selections in the archaeology-related fields of evolutionary biology, genetics and genomics, which are not subjected to peer review outside of technical issues.

Should be an interesting development.

• PLOS One
• Peer Review is Sooooooo Old School, Nikhil Swaminathan in Scientific American
• Academic Journals in Archaeology