584 Revamped Open-Peer Review Process (ROPP) Jasni Ahmad a , Assoc. Prof. Dr. Norshuhada Shiratuddin b a Collage of Arts and Sciences Information Technology Building Universiti Utara Malaysia, 06010 Sintok, Kedah Tel: 04-9284785, Fax: 04-928475 E-mail: jasni@uum.edu.my b Collage of Arts and Sciences Information Technology Building Universiti Utara Malaysia, 06010 Sintok, Kedah Tel: 04-9284700, Fax: 04-928475 E-mail: shuhada@uum.edu.my ABSTRACT It has been suggested that traditional anonymous peer review lacks accountability, can lead to abuse by reviewers, and may be biased and inconsistent. In response to these criticisms, the new trend known as open-peer review process (OPR) is proposed. OPR argues that the Internet can provide a better way to judge article quality using the opinion of every reader rather than that of only a couple of reviewers. This new trend is making the full peer-review records public and opens the peer-review process to anyone who is interested to read an article and furnish some comments. However, currently the OPR used to determine which articles are published in scientific journals is far from perfect. The new trend is moving toward OPR, and many journals have intention to allow such trend. This is confirmed by a preliminary study conducted involving 13 refereed journals in Malaysia. The result shows that 84.6% of the journal administrators are interested to move from double-blind review to open peer-review process. Although this is the case, no guidelines or models, either conceptually or otherwise, exist to assist the journal administration to migrate. Also, adopting this trend in ICT era implies a further necessity in proposing ICT related guidelines and models that will assist journal administration having intention to moving into this new trend. With the intention of providing such required guidelines and models, especially in Malaysian environment, the concept of Revamped Open-Peer Review Process (ROPP) is proposed. This study suggests a ROPP conceptual model for journal reviewing process. ROPP will support several novel activities in reviewing process such as ensuring the quality of reviewers through agent- based design that determines relevant criteria. Keywords : Open-review, Peer-review, Conceptual model, Revamped Open-Peer Review Process 1.0 INTRODUCTION Peer review (known as refereeing in some academic fields) is a process of subjecting an author's scholarly work or ideas to the scrutiny of others who are experts in the field. It is used primarily by editors to select and to screen submitted manuscripts , and by funding agencies, to decide the awarding of grants. Whereas the peer review process aims to make authors meet the standards of their discipline and of science in general. Publications and awards that have not undergone peer review are likely to be regarded with suspicion by scholars and professionals in many fields. Normally the experts are known as reviewers . The groups involved in peer-review process activities are described in Figure 1. Figure 1: Groups in Peer-review Process Normally peer-review will take much time starting from article submission until it is ready to be published by publisher. During the reviewing process, editors will take responsibilities to reject or accept papers that present good or bad quality. Some journals generally have a two- tier reviewing system as follow: § In the first stage, members of the editorial board verify that the paper's findings. § Papers that do pass this 'pre-reviewing' are sent out for in-depth review to outside referees. § Even after all reviewers recommend publication and all reviewer criticisms/suggestions for changes have been met, papers may still be returned to the authors for updating. world - wide -web Editorial boards Authors Editor-in-Chief Reviewers