openjournals / theoj

The Open Journal
http://theoj.org
MIT License
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Papers that haven't been accepted shouldn't be visible to everyone with the URL #243

Closed freelanceastro closed 8 years ago

freelanceastro commented 8 years ago

Right now, anyone with the URL — even people who haven't logged in — can see a paper under review, complete with comments. Given that the URLs are easy to guess given a paper's arXiv ID, this isn't a good idea. Only the editor, the submittor, and the reviewers of a paper should be able to see it before it's been accepted.

marcrohloff commented 8 years ago

Do we really need such a closed system? I don't see why. Also note that comments will be visible on accepted papers.

On Fri, Aug 7, 2015 at 11:05 AM, Adam Becker notifications@github.com wrote:

Right now, anyone with the URL — even people who haven't logged in — can see a paper under review, complete with comments. Given that the URLs are easy to guess given a paper's arXiv ID, this isn't a good idea. Only the editor, the submittor, and the reviewers of a paper should be able to see it before it's been accepted.

— Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub https://github.com/openjournals/theoj/issues/243.

freelanceastro commented 8 years ago

Unfortunately, I think this is a problem — and seeing comments on accepted papers is definitely a problem. (@arfon & @stuartlynn, please chime in on this, especially if you disagree with me.) We don't want to spook reviewers and submittors, who are used to closed peer review. While we'd probably like to push open peer review in the future, we can't start with that kind of system, or we won't get any adoption. At the very least, we have to make it opt-in — it can't be universal, or even the default, at the start.

Just to be clear: I completely agree that this is silly and unnecessary. But unfortunately it's the way peer review works. For now, we have to work within that system.

marcrohloff commented 8 years ago

Then I suggest that we simplify this so that non-assigned users can see the paper but not the comments. As a follow up, should they be able to see who the reviewers and editors were?

On Fri, Aug 7, 2015 at 2:26 PM, Adam Becker notifications@github.com wrote:

Unfortunately, I think this is a problem — and seeing comments on accepted papers is definitely a problem. (@arfon https://github.com/arfon & @stuartlynn https://github.com/stuartlynn, please chime in on this, especially if you disagree with me.) We don't want to spook reviewers and submittors, who are used to closed peer review. While we'd probably like to push open peer review in the future, we can't start with that kind of system, or we won't get any adoption. At the very least, we have to make it opt-in — it can't be universal, or even the default, at the start.

Just to be clear: I completely agree that this is silly and unnecessary, but unfortunately it's the way peer review works. For now, we have to work within that system.

— Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub https://github.com/openjournals/theoj/issues/243#issuecomment-128826768.

freelanceastro commented 8 years ago

Agreed; since submitted papers are all on the arXiv anyhow, there's no harm in someone finding them on the OJ as long as they can't see the comments. And no, I don't think they should be able to see who the reviewers are — but right now they can't.