Who will wish to lose friends by writing public reviews?

The problem is much smaller than you might think. In conventional journal reviewing, a critical review can be very damaging, because it delays the publication of the paper, thereby creating the risk that the author loses the priority (and the result) altogether. In our system, the author already has the publication date when the paper was published; noone can take that away from him or her. Therefore, it becomes much easier to see a critical review for what it is: a way of helping the author to improve the paper.

Besides, voluntarily writing a public review for someone else's paper shows that you consider that paper to be of importance. It should be seen as a supportive act, not as an aggression. A paper that inspires several people to write statements both for and against it is certainly much more interesting than a paper that doesn't.

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