Biology Direct six months on

Remember Eugene Koonin et al. and Biology Direct, announced last October?

Interestingly [Biology Direct are] 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.

Biology Direct today carries an editorial (PDF, watch out) which discusses information overload, why reviewers like to remain anonymous and the journal's lofty goals. It's a good read.

The editorial suggests that the reason reviewers like to remain anonymous is because they're afraid that giving a review critical enough to sink a paper will, basically, stir up ill feeling in the authors (there's the hassle involved in rewriting and reformatting the paper, the delays involved in resubmitting and, well, feelings of rejection).

Biology Direct's solution (sort of - it's intended to complement existing peer review based journals) is to publish anything interesting enough to be accepted for review by three of its editorial board, no matter how good or bad the reviews. This way, in theory, there shouldn't be any rejection involved in giving a bad review and thus there's no need for reviewers remain anonymous.

This also helps with information overload as everything published - even if it carries universally bad reviews - is, in theory, at least interesting enough to hold the attention of three well qualified researchers. In this way it's sort of like the Faculty of 1000, except with proper critical assessment built in.