Science to Modify Its Peer Review and Introducing the Melding of Print with On-line Publication for Complex Papers. (January 4, 2013)

The Editor in Chief of Science, Bruce Alberts, has announced in today's issue of the journal that in 2013 it will introduce a modified approach to the peer review of manuscripts submitted to it for publication.

Science has recently completed an experiment designed to improve the process of peer review for research in all of the scientific disciplines we publish. As a result, in 2013 we will be moving to a system that provides an opportunity for each reviewer to comment on the other reviews obtained for the same submitted manuscript, just prior to the decision that is made by a small team of our editors as to whether to reject, accept only with revision, or accept a manuscript for publication. In this way, we hope to minimize the amount of revision required for manuscripts that are judged to be nearly suitable for publication.

Whether or not Science will report as to the success or otherwise of alteration remains to be seen.

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Professor Alberts also announced that:

...in a new offering, selected papers will appear online with the length and integration of methods and data that are most appropriate for reporting the research. These papers will be represented in the print magazine by special structured abstracts, but they will be listed as research articles in the print Table of Contents, being indexed and cited the same way as the shorter papers that appear in full in print. They will also appear in full in all digital versions of Science, such as those designed for mobile devices. A similar approach is planned for selected review articles.