for the future of scientific publishing

A scientific publication system needs to provide two basic ser-vices: access and evaluation. The traditional publication system restricts the access to papers by requiring payment, and it restricts the evaluation of papers by relying on just 2–4 pre-publication peer reviews and by keeping the reviews secret. As a result, the current system suffers from a lack of quality and transparency of the peer review process, and the only immediately available indi-cation of a new paper’s quality is the prestige of the journal it appeared in. Open access (OA) is now widely accepted as desirable and is beginning to become a reality. However, the second essential ele-ment, evaluation, has received less attention. Open evaluation (OE), an ongoing post-publication process of transparent peer review and rating of papers, promises to address the problems of the current system and bring scientific publishing into th