Journal Nature ends online group editing
The journal Nature, citing lack of participation, pulled its online experiment of allowing public editing of scientific articles.
Since the summer, Nature invited scientists whose articles were considered for publication in the magazine to first post their work online for public review. The magazine's editors said the move was intended in part to determine whether a more open review process could reveal low quality or fraudulent papers, The Wall Street Journal said Thursday.
In announcing the discontinuation, Nature's editors said they found the majority of scientist-authors were unwilling to post their papers or were unwilling to criticize peers' work publicly by posting comments on Nature's Web site.
Of the 1,369 short-listed papers submitted during the four-month trial, authors of 71 papers were willing to post their work online, Nature said, receiving 92 technical comments.
Another experiment with online collaborative editing began. A new online scientific journal called PLoS ONE, published by the non-profit Public Library of Science, asks readers to post comments or questions about articles once they are published.
Copyright 2006 by United Press International