Through the Looking Backwards Glass

In this editorial, the Editor-in-Chief provides a brief introduction to the genesis and production of this special Then & Now issue. He provides an overview of the articles contained in the issue, before moving on to expanding on the current and future calls for contributions to the journal. After providing prospective author guidance and insights on forthcoming journal volumes, the editorial concludes with a guide to the various channels though which readers and authors alike can interact with the Exchanges journal.

Technology and peer review: the open and participatory dimension

Peer review is a consolidated procedure in the academic context and its process affects various range of research outputs from project funding applications to manuscript publication. Peer review can be developed through modalities that imply a different level of transparency in the relationship between anonymity of the author and the reviewer/s. With the development of social media and the growth of scientific online communities, new forms of peer review have acquired a recognised value, matching the need of the academy to rely on selected reviewers and the need of the prospective author to get a richer feedback from a variety of scholars through different means, open comments and/or discussion fora, and always accessible online. Hybrid forms of review, which can integrate a formal peer review with an open comment opportunity on the Web, proved successful for both improving the author’s draft and enhancing its chances of publication and for the reviewers who can use this valuable activity to enrich their reputation by collecting and showing their reviews as research output. In this framework, quality, transparency and reputation acquire new nuances in their connection with the process of research validation.