今年6月1日至9月30日，《自然》杂志做了个开放同行评议（open peer review）的尝试。在这期间，他们邀请文章通过编辑初期评价的作者尝试开放同行评议。如果作者们同意，他们把文章放在开放服务器上，供公众评论；同时进行标准的同行评议过程。当标准的同行评议过程结束，他们把收到的评论收集起来，然后把文章从服务器上移除。现在，《自然》杂志对这次尝试做了个总结。

作者以及被邀请评论的科学家们，尽管对这个概念挺热心，但是开放同行评议还不是很被接受。

他们给出了一些数据。在这期间，总共有 71 篇文章（5 %）的作者同意他们的文章接受开放的评论；其中，33篇没有收到评论；其它 38 篇（54%）收到 92 个学术性评论；这些评论中，有 49 个是针对 8 篇文章的。

编辑们在对文章做决定时对收到的评论进行了评级：

1. Actively unhelpful
2. Reasonable comments, but no useful information
3. Valid minor points and/or details
4. Major points in line with solicited reviewers’ comments
5. Directly influenced publication over and above reviewers’ comments

他们发现，没有一个 5 级评论，只有 4 个 4 级评论。

作为定型的评价，编辑们讨论了结果，得出下述观点：

1. A general sense of indifference from key contacts in their fields to the trial, and that it was like ‘pulling teeth’ to obtain any comments.
2. Direct attempts to solicit comments met with very limited success.
3. Biologist editors in particular were not surprised that authors in very competitive areas did not wish to be involved.
4. Anecdotally, some authors were reluctant to take part due to fear of scooping and patent applications.
5. Anecdotally, potential commenters felt that open peer review is ‘nice to do’ but did not want to provide any feedback on the papers on the server.
6. Editors felt that most of the comments provided were of limited use for decision-making. Most were general comments, such as “nice work”, rather than adding to the review process.

所有参与尝试的作者都被邀请参与了一个调查。联系的 64 人，有 27 个回应，42 % 的回应率。

1. 20 respondents thought it was an interesting experiment.
2. Of the 14 respondents who received open comments, four described them as ‘not useful’, six as ‘somewhat useful’, and four as ‘very useful’.
3. Although most respondents received no additional comments by taking part in the trial (such as e-mail or phone), those who did (five people) found them either ‘useful’ (four) or ‘very useful’ (one).
4. Some authors expressed concern about possible scooping and others were disappointed that they didn’t receive more comments.
5. Of the 27 respondents, 11 expressed a preference for open peer review.

总之就是说，结果不是很理想。Nature 作为老牌科学出版社，在尝试新方法，运用 Web 2.0 的观念与技术到学术领域的步子还是很前卫的。希望他们不要气馁。

觉得这样不理想的结果不能只怪罪到学术圈的保守上。学术圈子和大众娱乐圈子，确实有很大不同。Web 2.0 的应用并不能简单复制到学术圈并获得成功。比如说，对一个时事新闻做出有可圈可点的评论，与对一篇学术文章做出有价值的评议，域值相差太大，需要花费的时间精力不在一个量级上的。