Dear all, I'd agree with Frank's sentiment. There is a strong risk that it would put reviewers in a conflicted position. You only have to look at say the world of literature to see that authors very rarely say anything that isn't positive about another author's work publicly. As a grant panellist I've already seen plenty of reviews that are little more than hagiographies of the great professor!
That doesn't mean that James's suggestion is a bad one; it just means that it would need a change in the whole ecosystem. Perhaps it is time that funding agencies considered hiring professional reviewers, rather than expecting academics to do it for free. Professional reviewers would likely gain from open, appropriately critical reviews as their reputation would depend on delivering reviews that are valid, selective, and high quality. This could offer an attractive alternative career for postdocs who have decided not to go for academic positions or academics looking for a part-time role as they move into retirement. I would argue that one of the consequences of the pandemic is that academic workloads have changed from "unsustainably high" to "completely unsustainable". Academia is becoming increasingly non-inclusive as those with caring responsibilities, disabilities, and other issues that constrict their time cannot keep up with all the "extras" that are expected. Removing the burden of reviews from our backs would help bringing back balance. I suspect that what is needed is proper trials of different approaches, with pre-defined criteria for success. Winston Churchill described democracy as "the worst form of government - except for all the others that have been tried." I'd feel that same about our current peer review system until we have clear evidence that there is something better! Nic From: CCP4 bulletin board <CCP4BB@JISCMAIL.AC.UK> On Behalf Of Frank von Delft Sent: 23 June 2022 07:09 To: CCP4BB@JISCMAIL.AC.UK Subject: Re: [ccp4bb] open review? I suspect funders will worry about it becoming even harder to find reviewers - they're already hard to flush out, if I'm not mistaken, and might become even more reclusive if they run the risk of being pilloried in public. If that sounds theoretical: even in this community, for all its collegiality and friendliness, we pillory one another in public and print just about our data. Frank On 23/06/2022 02:08, James Holton wrote: Greetings all, I'd like to ask a question that I expect might generate some spirited discussion. We have seen recently a groundswell of support for openness and transparency in peer review. Not only are pre-prints popular, but we are also seeing reviewer comments getting published along with the papers themselves. Sometimes even signed by the reviewers, who would have traditionally remained anonymous. My question is: why don't we also do this for grant proposals? I know this is not the norm. However, after thinking about it, why wouldn't we want the process of how funding is awarded in science to be at least as transparent as the process of publishing the results? Not that the current process isn't transparent, but it could be more so. What if applications, and their reviewer comments, were made public? Perhaps after an embargo period? There could be great benefits here. New investigators especially, would have a much clearer picture of format, audience, context and convention. I expect unsuccessful applications might be even more valuable than successful ones. And yet, in reality, those old proposals and especially the comments almost never see the light of day. Monumental amounts of work goes into them, on both sides, but then get tucked away into the darkest corners of our hard drives. So, 2nd question is: would you do it? Would you upload your application into the public domain for all to see? What about the reviewer comments? If not, why not? Afraid people will steal your ideas? Well, once something is public, its pretty clear who got the idea first. 3rd question: what if the service were semi-private? and you got to get comments on your proposal before submitting it to your funding agency? Would that be helpful? What if in exchange for that service you had to review 2-3 other applications? Would that be worth it? Or, perhaps, I'm being far too naiive about all this. For all I know there are some rules against doing this I'm not aware of. Either way, I'm interested in what this community thinks. Please share your views! On- or off-list is fine. -James Holton MAD Scientist ######################################################################## To unsubscribe from the CCP4BB list, click the following link: https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/cgi-bin/WA-JISC.exe?SUBED1=CCP4BB&A=1<https://eur03.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.jiscmail.ac.uk%2Fcgi-bin%2FWA-JISC.exe%3FSUBED1%3DCCP4BB%26A%3D1&data=05%7C01%7CN.J.Harmer%40exeter.ac.uk%7C5107229b18b6400eaac708da54dedd1d%7C912a5d77fb984eeeaf321334d8f04a53%7C0%7C0%7C637915613406965496%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C3000%7C%7C%7C&sdata=bNXnJ1eZB6RSRVXLAU8z%2BEvpdTSPUgpMIUS5KRZyOkU%3D&reserved=0> This message was issued to members of www.jiscmail.ac.uk/CCP4BB<https://eur03.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.jiscmail.ac.uk%2FCCP4BB&data=05%7C01%7CN.J.Harmer%40exeter.ac.uk%7C5107229b18b6400eaac708da54dedd1d%7C912a5d77fb984eeeaf321334d8f04a53%7C0%7C0%7C637915613406965496%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C3000%7C%7C%7C&sdata=JeYpcL0VI7%2BHGrcminOGdUF9Tbc5%2BuZJqqfv3HILifI%3D&reserved=0>, a mailing list hosted by www.jiscmail.ac.uk<https://eur03.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.jiscmail.ac.uk%2F&data=05%7C01%7CN.J.Harmer%40exeter.ac.uk%7C5107229b18b6400eaac708da54dedd1d%7C912a5d77fb984eeeaf321334d8f04a53%7C0%7C0%7C637915613406965496%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C3000%7C%7C%7C&sdata=21JCdGlAT1qvSsj8ykHMGBmtFedqxtesiyRolq4exlI%3D&reserved=0>, terms & conditions are available at https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/policyandsecurity/<https://eur03.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.jiscmail.ac.uk%2Fpolicyandsecurity%2F&data=05%7C01%7CN.J.Harmer%40exeter.ac.uk%7C5107229b18b6400eaac708da54dedd1d%7C912a5d77fb984eeeaf321334d8f04a53%7C0%7C0%7C637915613406965496%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C3000%7C%7C%7C&sdata=%2BiJ2gRxssovS%2BHxCc5GF25Jf7xnjgJuQJhwSH7QX%2BzI%3D&reserved=0> ________________________________ To unsubscribe from the CCP4BB list, click the following link: https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/cgi-bin/WA-JISC.exe?SUBED1=CCP4BB&A=1<https://eur03.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.jiscmail.ac.uk%2Fcgi-bin%2FWA-JISC.exe%3FSUBED1%3DCCP4BB%26A%3D1&data=05%7C01%7CN.J.Harmer%40exeter.ac.uk%7C5107229b18b6400eaac708da54dedd1d%7C912a5d77fb984eeeaf321334d8f04a53%7C0%7C0%7C637915613406965496%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C3000%7C%7C%7C&sdata=bNXnJ1eZB6RSRVXLAU8z%2BEvpdTSPUgpMIUS5KRZyOkU%3D&reserved=0> ######################################################################## To unsubscribe from the CCP4BB list, click the following link: https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/cgi-bin/WA-JISC.exe?SUBED1=CCP4BB&A=1 This message was issued to members of www.jiscmail.ac.uk/CCP4BB, a mailing list hosted by www.jiscmail.ac.uk, terms & conditions are available at https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/policyandsecurity/
