Papers submitted to the Human Intrigue section at PSB will undergo a crowd review process.
The traditional peer preview process has many widely accepted draw backs, is inefficient, and introduces bias and systemic discrimination. This is particularly true in multi-disciplinary research, where it is increasingly difficult to identify reviewers who are qualified to provide feedback on entire manuscripts.
The crowd review method has many merits. One, it reduces the workload for any individual reviewer and hence mitigates reviewer fatigue. Two, it allows reviewers to focus on sections of a manuscript they are qualified to give feedback on. Three, due to the nature of the scientific discussion, the feedback tends to be stronger and reach an informative consensus among reviewers. Four, a greater diversity of reviewers can be included, improving the overall quality of a final manuscript.
We are establishing a crowd review platform that would allow reviewers to engage in discussion about manuscripts through a comment section to allow debate back and forth. We are committing to the following principles of crowd peer review:
- We will seek a wide diversity of reviewers for each submission
- Reviewers will have the opportunity to interact with one another in order to agree on critical changes and provide a variety of feedback for authors
- Reviewers will be credited for their contributions on a separate acknowledgement section the conference proceedings we’re calling ‘Reviewer Contributors’
Interested in this collaborative review process? Let us know below: