Open peer review at Collabra: Q&A with UC Press Director Alison Mudditt

[Richard Poynder]

Earlier this year University of California Press (UC Press) launched a
new open access mega journal called Collabra.

One of the distinctive features of Collabra is that its authors can
choose to have the peer review reports signed by the reviewers and
published alongside their papers, making them freely available for all
to read — a process usually referred to as open peer review.

Since Collabra is offering open peer review on a voluntary basis it
remains unclear how many papers will be published in this way, but the
signs are encouraging: the authors of the first paper published by
Collabra opted for open peer review, as have the majority of authors
whose papers are currently being processed by the publisher. Moreover,
no one has yet refused to be involved because open peer review is an
option, and no one has expressed a concern about it.

So how does open peer review work in practice and what issues does it
raise? A short Q&A with UC Press Director Alison Mudditt is available
here:

http://poynder.blogspot.co.uk/2015/08/open-peer-review-at-collabra-q-with-uc.html