Whither Open Access Peer Review?
A recent Chronicle of Higher Education posting describes an amusing deception carried out by a researcher in response to receiving numerous “aggressive” unsolicited e-mail messages from an open access publisher which finances its scientific journals by charging authors a publication fee.
Philip M. Davis, a doctoral student in communication at Cornell University, submitted a fake computer-generated research paper from a fake institution. The paper – “a nonsensical five-page report with footnotes and graphical charts” – was accepted after the publisher said it had been peer-reviewed (along with an invoice for $800.)
This made me wonder what happened to the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) conducted “Peer-to-Patent” experiment. The answer is that, as of June 15, 2009, the pilot is now closed to new applications, but the pipeline of existing applications will continue to be processed until they have all completed the normal peer review cycle (estimated to be mid-October).
The pilot was set-up to determine if peer review can support, in a cost effective manner, timely, accurate decisions about what inventions merit a U.S. patent. Certainly in terms of participation the pilot can be judged a success. A recent update recorded that since Peer-to-Patent launched, there have been 370,011 page views from 67,188 absolute unique visitors in 152 countries/territories with 2,501 registered users of the site and nearly 350 prior art uploads by volunteer experts since the project’s launch. 121 applications have completed or are currently participating in the program. There are currently 27 patent applications available for review.
The decision to discontinue the program was made by the USPTO on the heels of the recent recognition of Peer-to-Patent by the White House Open Government Initiative. The USPTO has requested a period of time in which to evaluate the program before making a decision on whether and how to proceed further.
We’d be interested here in your views of the program.
We submitted two patent applications specifically designed for Peer to Patent review. As a consequence of these designs, we had the two most active review teams this year. We also set up discussions on Linked In and professional blogs in the fields of the invention.
And yet, the best prior art we came up with was from an acquaintance who saw a newspaper article about our inventions and sent me a link to something similar. http://www.marketsandpatents.com/pdfs/stamford_advocate_sober_teen.pdf
Bottom line? Open review has promise, but you never know where your best prior art is going to come from.
That reminds me of a piece of prior art cited against a British patent application, GB 2117179, for an entry signal system for pets, e.g. a dog. Essentially, the invention is a doorbell set low down so that the dog can press it to ask to be let in through the dog-flap.
The story goes that the examiner was eating breakfast one morning and his son was reading his favourite comic, “The Beano”, at the breaklfast table. Lo and behold, one of the comic frames on the front cover had a drawing of Gnasher, Dennis the Menace’s dog, pressing a button next to the front door with his nose asking to be let into the house! The search report citation is “The Beano, No. 2015, Page 1″ if anyone cares to check.
As you say, you never know where your best prior art is going to come from!