Peer review & Biology Direct

Biomedcentral are publishing a new open access journal called Biology Direct, which will "encompass all aspects of biology" but is focusing at first on genomics, bioinformatics and systems biology.

Interestingly they're embracing an open peer review model where authors pick their reviewers, who aren't anonymous and can choose to have their comments published alongside the paper. This is similar to David Kaplan's suggestions for reforming peer review, except that to be published in Biology Direct you'll have to pick reviewers from the journal's editorial board. Kaplan suggested that it wouldn't matter if you picked your cronies to review your paper for you because if the reviewers weren't anonymous the editors would notice and could reject the paper on that basis.

As a side note, the blurb says that everything will be on a tight timeframe: reviewers will have only 72 hours to agree to review a manuscript and three weeks after that to deliver their review... no more waiting months for that last reviewer to submit their comments?