Open access science news is mostly good, with a bit of ugly (arstechnica)

by John Timmer

eLife launches with a new review model. eLifeis another new open access journal, this one with a simple business model: get some money from the organizations that pay for a lot of bioscience research (like the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Wellcome Trust, and Max Planck Institute). The journal has now launched, and is taking another approach to peer review. Most journals have three reviewers, each of which typically provides a different list of concerns and requests for additional information. The researchers are typically left guessing as to which issues are serious, which ones aren't major priorities, and which ones are completely misguided.

For papers reviewed ateLife, they don't have to guess; the reviewers have to get together (virtually) and discuss their individual complaints, then create a consensus review. This, ideally, tells the authors exactly what they need to do in order to have the paper published.

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