Pardon our appearance! ThirdReviewer is undergoing an upgrade. Please check back soon.
The Third Reviewer is a forum for scientists to share opinions about recently published research. It’s like journal club, but…
- Faster. No need to set aside an hour of your time.
- Convenient. Check in from home or at lab, at 5 a.m. or 10 p.m.
- Comprehensive. Browse papers from lots of journals, all on one site.
Each paper has a comment site, which you can find by searching or browsing from menus. Currently both microbiology and neuroscience papers in different journals are included.
Because we want to foster honest, open discussion, you can contribute your thoughts anonymously, pseudonymously, or under your real name.
It’s the same idea behind journal club or hallway chit-chat with your colleagues–”Hey, what did you think about that recent Nature paper?” The only difference is that your colleagues have now expanded to include anyone who wants to participate.
Why is this site needed?
Let’s say you’ve just read an interesting paper on development, but the patch-clampers down the hall don’t want to talk transcription factors with you. ThirdReviewer provides a location for you to share your thoughts about recent work with colleagues from all over the world who share your interests.
But there are already comment forms on the Nature website, and nobody uses them.
There are two problems with journal commenting as it’s currently set up:
- Fear of reprisal. Nature and other websites require you to log in with your real name. Most scientists hesitate to associate their real name with any type of critical comment in a visible location, for fear that it might be used against them by a peer reviewer on their next grant or manuscript. ThirdReviewer allows anonymous commenting (see below).
- Inconvenient setup. If you want to comment on a Nature paper, you have to go to the Nature site, find that paper, and comment. If you want to comment on a PLoS paper, that’s a different website. And so forth. The ThirdReviewer provides a centralized location for commentary on papers from 11 major neuroscience venues.