I have a question that ties together two recent issues on this thread: peer review and open access. My personal stance: I'd like to see academic research become more freely available online while maintaining peer review. Assuming some of you share these goals, how do we reconcile the common act of putting early-stage work online, either as blog posts/talk cribs (like danah) or as full papers, while maintaining blind peer review? A personal anecdote: Recently I reviewed a paper for a top-tier academic journal and Googled one of the citations to find out more about it. To my surprise I found a copy of the paper I was reviewing, with full authorship information and citation info that claimed it was "In press" at the journal! This is an extreme case, but it seems to me that as more work comes online (e.g. through blog posts or full papers) before the peer-review process is completed, the chance that this work will be reviewed blindly are lessoned. Any thoughts on what practices (for authors, editors, and reviewers) make most sense for balancing the benefits of circulating ideas and work early vs. the goal of maintaining blind review (or what's left of it)? Thanks, Nicole * * * Nicole Ellison, PhD nellison@msu.edu