Axes of Open Review

At Language Science Press, we are experimenting with Open Review. While investigating how we could implement an Open Review system, we discovered that there are actually very different things which could be called Open Review, and even in a small team, opinions differ as to what is the real thing.

 

Axes

We have established the following dimensions:

open not open
Selection process anyone can comment a restricted class of people can comment
Transparency the names of the reviewers are revealed the names of the reviewers remain anonymous
Online the reviews are created on the Internet the reviews are created offline (e.g. pdf comments in a file)

The  following criteria do not apply to openness, but are nevertheless relevant:

Time final publication will incorporate comments publication is finished before commenting is open
Relevance comments have an influence on the acceptance comments exist next to a different process of quality assurance
Scope comments are local, paragraph level at the maximum global comments, appreciation of the whole work

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New book: The Talking Heads experiment: Origins of words and meanings

Steels2015We are happy to announce the first book in the series Computational Models of Language EvolutionThe Talking Heads experiment: Origins of words and meanings” by Luc Steels.

The Talking Heads Experiment, conducted in the years 1999-2001, was the first large-scale experiment in which open populations of situated embodied agents created for the first time ever a new shared vocabulary by playing language games about real world scenes in front of them. Continue reading