Maria Kowalczuk, BioMed Central’s Deputy Biology Editor will be speaking at the University of Sussex on Thursday 14^th of March.

The March Research Hive Seminar programme, run by the Library of the University of Sussex, will focus on the role of peer review in different sciences.

Maria will be discussing the changing publishing landscape in biology and medical sciences, and how the move towards online publishing and open access is driving innovations in peer review practices. Traditional single-blind and double-blind peer review is widely practiced but also widely criticised. In the last few years journals, publishers and the scientific community have proposed several innovations to address the issues of transparency, consistency, cost and speed of peer review. Among these innovations are open peer review, minimal re-review, cascading peer review and post-publication peer review. Some new initiatives, like separating peer review from journals, still remain to be tried and tested.

Martin Eve, a Lecturer at the University of Lincoln and Editor of the e-journal Orbit: Writing Around Pynchon, will speak from the perspective of the social sciences.

Maria is looking forward to visiting the University of Sussex and discussing the future of the peer review process and the role BioMed Central is playing in developing new and improved models of peer review.