Hello Jacob,

First, thank you for the question and links.  To respond to your question directly, I have a difficult time identifying circumstances under which open, public, and non-blind review is not preferable to other alternatives.

I believe that the benefits are obvious and include the:

• potential for multiple perspectives,
• higher likelihood for cross- and inter-disciplinary discussions,
• opportunity for the author to better engage with the reviewer(s),
• increased accountability on the part of reviewer(s),
• opportunities for reviews to be challenged and improve their thinking (a form of compensation for the time they have invested in the process),
• potential for better distribution of work for multiple reviewers (this would be particularly true for manuscripts and presentation proposals that are inter-interdisciplinary),
• likelihood  that a robust open process provides an opportunity to reinforce values and behaviours of agile methods (iteration, courage, honesty, participation, transparency, meritocratic decision making etc.).

All of which should result in higher quality knowledge assets, the opportunity for learning, and more timely and transparent publication (dissemination). I think that these points are all pretty consistent with the (very insightful) article that you shared at http://journal.frontiersin.org/article/10.3389/fncom.2012.00072/full.

As an aside, I will mention that these are the same points of logic for any authentic review / consultation process included in open organizations (policy and procedure development, procurement decisions, and planning, etc.) and government policy actions.

Now, I can see how some proprietary publishers might have some objections, which is just the way that it is. That under some circumstances the process could be subject to more-or-less malicious “trolling,” which could be addressed with a little forum moderating.  There is also possibility that non-meritorious considerations will creep into the decision making process, which a robust process should guard against and the open nature of public review should render obvious and addressable.

I’ll mention that the alternatives suggested in In Search Of an Optimal Peer Review System (http://www.jopm.org/opinion/2009/10/21/in-search-of-an-optimal-peer-review-system/)

“I think that it would make much more sense simply to publish the paper—on a university website or in an electronic journal with a low threshold—with my comments and those of the other reviewer, and let the world decide what it thinks.”

would challenge the method in which the Australian Government, Australian Research Council assesses quality research outputs.  
• You can check out an overview at: http://www.arc.gov.au/excellence-research-australia
• and information about the 2015 outcomes a: http://www.arc.gov.au/era-2015 

The principle metric is around publication quality (based on characteristic of the journal). Open publication with open review would disrupt the current process, but may provide some really nice opportunities for more authentic and rich interpretation of publication (if not research quality). In addition, much of the research funding in Australia comes from a few relatively tightly regulated State/Public/Government sources.  It is my feeling that more openness and transparency (open non-blind) review of grant proposals would result in better distribution, more collaboration, and more sophisticated inter-disciplinary funded research.  And, for better or worse, it may also result in better collaboration with the private sector for applied research.  Currently, there is an assumed halo-effect on proposals offered from elite Australian Universities (Group of Eight). Open and non-blind review might result in more thoughtful critique, and would certainly result in better dissemination of knowledge (current thinking within the University community, government, and related organizations), but I believe that it would be challenge by Universities interested in commercializing discoveries that may flow from publicly funded research… yes, I know that is another important topic.

Well, that’s all for now.  Thanks!!

-Ken