I’ve covered a few interesting projects around the peer review process recently, whether it’s the Peer Reviewers’ Openness Initiative, which aims to encourage the sharing of data through the collective action of peer reviewers, or the Cureus Journal of Medical Science, which claims it is the first crowdsourced, open access medical journal in the world.

Such developments have gained the attention of the European Commission, who have proposed a pilot project, via its Horizon 2020 program, to give the crowd greater involvement in the peer review process.

Crowd reviews

The project will allow the crowd to post up their opinions on the status or progress of any research project that is receiving funding from the Horizon 2020 program.

The aim is for the open reviews to then be filtered into the formal review process and better inform analysis of each project, and its progress.

“This collaborative and open approach should allow interested outsiders to contribute to the project with new input, and also allow problems to be identified,” the Commission says.

Now, it should be said that this more open approach is different to the projects mentioned above in the sense that those providing their analysis are likely to remain anonymous, which might allow for more open exchanges, but also hampers transparency, and the professional reviewers retain the final word.

“This would not be a fully open review as the expert reviewers would have the last say, but it would be a stepping stone towards it, to gauge the interest and identify potential benefits and problems,” the Commission says.

These expert teams typically consist of three EC people per project, with the analysis done on a single-blind basis, which ensures that whilst the reviewers know the applicants, the applicants don’t know the reviewers.

Suffice to say, there are advantages and disadvantages to the approach, and whilst it will broaden the feedback received by projects, it could potentially make the whole process much longer.

There have also been concerns raised about sensitive company information falling into the hands of rival firms.  At the moment, reviewers often have to sign non-disclosure agreements to ensure this doesn’t happen, and it remains unclear how the EC will tackle this issue.

Ultimately, there may be difficulties in aligning the desire for openness within the EC with the desire for opaqueness by companies wishing to exploit their IP.

It will be an interesting experiment to track for sure.