Anonymous reviewing has been repeatedly criticized as prone to bias and even unethical conduct, but more importantly it is problematic because it does not provide scholars with incentives to submit thorough and constructive criticisms.

Another problem, also discussed here, is the role of journal editors in the review process. A serious problem is that journal editors are not always the most qualified to select adequate reviewers for each paper and in addition, they are influenced by their interest in raising their journal’s status by maintaining high rejection rates and selecting articles based on their citation expectancy.

Representing an international, not-for-profit organization founded to improve the way scientific papers are evaluated, I support that it is time to challenge two fundamental ideas in the current peer review model:

First, that scientists are not ready to openly assess each others’ papers if they are properly acknowledged for their work.

Second, that peer review can only be arranged and handled by journal editors.

Instead we propose a journal-independent, author-guided open peer review system that can complement journal peer review and can significantly improve and expedite the journal publication process.

Our free, multidisciplinary open peer review platform called LIBRE will enable authors to directly invite expert peers to formally and openly evaluate their work posted in any online archive (libraries, repositories, preprint servers, etc). Based on these reviews, articles can be updated and submitted to any academic journal. Editors receiving these preprint reviewed papers will be able to make a better-informed decision on whether an article is methodologically sound and merits publication in their journal. This reduces risk-taking on behalf of journal editors and improves the quality of articles before they are even submitted for formal journal peer review.