The SciPost seems to be a new publishing platform with rather unusual peer review procedure -- fully open. It means that names of authors/editors/referees are known to the public at any stage. My colleagues expressed an opinion that it cannot be productive. Therefore my question: can SciPost be considered a reliable and serious publisher competing with journals beyond the paywall?
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There are other publishers and journals performing open peer-review, so this part is not new/unique.– FuzzyLeapfrogJun 28, 2018 at 9:38
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The question in the title is not the same as the question you are asking. May I suggest editing so that they match? ;-)– FlytoJun 29, 2018 at 7:18
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@Flyto Please, feel free to edit the post. I was hesitant to put "Can SciPost be considered a reliable venue?" in the title---it can be perceived as too opinionated. "What is SciPost?", however, calls for objective answers.– yarchikJun 29, 2018 at 13:05
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2 Answers
In SciPost, the texts of the reviews are publicly available, but the reviewers can stay anonymous, and most of them do, as far as I can tell.
With 153 published articles so far, including by well-known authors such as Cardy, Verlinde, Rychkov, Seiberg, etc, it is clear that the journal has a good reputation among researchers. The challenge is now to become financially sustainable, while remaining free to authors and readers.
Another journal that practices a form of open peer review is PeerJ.
Only time will tell. It seems like an initiative supported by serious partners. In order for it to become successful, it will need a critical mass of interesting articles, and avoid serous mishaps. Whether that will happen is hard to predict.
answered Jun 28, 2018 at 9:06
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Addionally, this highly depends on the scientists reading, reviewing, editing and publishing with SciPost. It's the community that decides whether it will work or not. Jun 28, 2018 at 9:40