Stephen Curry describes a recent paper in Biology Direct, which refutes an older paper in Cell, published complete with referees and authors correspondence, and names. Of course PLoS ONE was doing this previously... - Cameron Neylon

That reminds me; I wonder what authors and reviewers generally feel about attaching their commentary to their papers when reviewers get the option to exclude their identities. I know open peer review, where identities are known during and after the peer review session, isn't that well received in general. What if the identities of the reviewers are not revealed? - Wobbler

Is it common for PLoS ONE to publish reviewers' and authors' comment, Cameron? I've not read many of their papers but haven't noticed this feature. - Stephen Curry

It was introduced for a while, when referees agreed that they could be included, generally with the referee's name but it was pulled for reasons that I don't currently recall, not sure whether it was a technical or social issue. I'm sure Bora/Pete can comment on that. Also they've just gone live with article level metrics so if you look now things should look quite different. I don't think it was ever common. Possibly 20% of papers the referees agreed for their comments to be made public I think - Cameron Neylon

We posted reviewer comments for a period (6 months ish) and hope to re-start in the near future. We still occasionally do so, but we stopped at that time due to resourcing issues and also a feeling that we hadnt got it quite 'right'. - Peter Binfield

Ah, I didn't know that. It probably explains why only about 20% of articles have reviewer comments attached (http://friendfeed.com/e...). @Cam if that's the 20% you're thinking of, there's no data on how many agreed, just how many papers have the reviews attached -- not important until you know that the practice only lasted 6mo. - Bill Hooker

@Peter: can you comment further on what you felt you had not got right? - Bill Hooker

@Cameron - Where can you find the 'article level metrics'? Had a quick scan with no joy. - Stephen Curry

@Bill - the comments were often of a minor 'typo' nature; had often been dealt with in revision stages (and hence were irrelevant); had sometimes been successfully disputed by authors in rebuttal letters (which weren't posted); were labor intensive to post etc - Peter Binfield

@Stephen - the middle tab on all PLoS ONE articles. Check out an example at: http://www.plosone.org/article... - Peter Binfield