Revamped Open-Peer Review Process (ROPP)

It has been suggested that traditional anonymous peer review lacks accountability, can lead to abuse by reviewers, and may be biased and inconsistent. In response to these criticisms, the new trend known as open-peer review process (OPR) is proposed. OPR argues that the Internet can provide a better way to judge article quality using the opinion of every reader rather than that of only a couple of reviewers. This new trend is making the full peer-review records public and opens the peer-review process to anyone who is interested to read an article and furnish some comments. However, currently the OPR used to determine which articles are published in scientific journals is far from perfect. The new trend is moving toward OPR, and many journals have intention to allow such trend. This is confirmed by a preliminary study conducted involving 13 refereed journals in Malaysia. The result shows that 84.6% of the journal administrators are interested to move from double-blind review to open peer-review process. Although this is the case, no guidelines or models, either conceptually or otherwise, exist to assist the journal administration to migrate. Also, adopting this trend in ICT era implies a further necessity in proposing ICT related guidelines and models that will assist journal administration having intention to moving into this new trend. With the intention of providing such required guidelines and models, especially in Malaysian environment, the concept of Revamped Open-Peer Review Process (ROPP) is proposed. This study suggests a ROPP conceptual model for journal reviewing process. ROPP will support several novel activities in reviewing process such as ensuring the quality of reviewers through agentbased design that determines relevant criteria.