True Peer Review

TL;DR

The paper proposes a new peer review model called 'True Peer Review' that separates the process of commenting from gatekeeping, aiming to improve transparency, engagement, and scientific quality.

Contribution

It introduces the concept of True Peer Review, which eliminates gatekeeping from peer review, fostering open debate and community engagement in scientific publishing.

Findings

Separates comment and gatekeeping processes in peer review

Eliminates gatekeeping to reduce bias and improve transparency

Encourages open debate and community engagement

Abstract

In computer science, conferences and journals conduct peer review in order to decide what to publish. Many have pointed out the inherent weaknesses in peer review, including those of bias, quality, and accountability. Many have suggested and adopted refinements of peer review, for instance, double blind peer review with author rebuttals. In this essay, I argue that peer review as currently practiced conflates the sensible idea of getting comments on a paper with the irrevocably-flawed one that we either accept or reject the paper, which I term gatekeeping. If we look at the two separately, then it is clear that the ills associated with current peer review systems are not due to the practice of getting comments, but due to the practice of gatekeeping. True peer review constitutes my proposal for replacing existing peer review systems. It embraces the idea of open debate on the merits of a paper; however, it rejects unequivocally the exercise of gatekeeping. True peer review offers all the benefits of current peer review systems but has none of its weaknesses. True peer review will lead to a truly engaged community of researchers and therefore better science.