Open-Review Journal Launched, A new journal that publishes peer review comments alongside its manuscripts goes live. Article byy Edyta Zielinska | February 13, 2013  The Scientist

The new open-access, open-peer-review journal, PeerJ (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PeerJ) published its first 30 articles online yesterday (February 12). “We are doing things that no other publisher is doing,” said Jason Hoyt, Co-Founder and CEO of PeerJ. “The global academic community pays as much as $9.5B per year for access to academic journals. We believe that these costs could be reduced by as much as 75 percent using new business models.”

PeerJ comes in the midst of an ongoing debate about the foundation of science publishing, and a push by many in the research community to be more open. The journal has assembled an editorial board of 800 academics along with an advisory board that includes five Nobel laureates. The decision of whether to publish a submitted manuscript is based more on scientific validity than on impact, and the journal encourages reviewers to post their comments alongside the articles. The journal uses a creative commons license that allows for free distribution and dissemination with the appropriate attribution.