Nature's peer-review trial began at the start of last month. Authors whose manuscripts are sent for peer review can choose to have their submissions posted on a preprint server for open comments, in parallel with the conventional peer-review process. Anyone in the field can then post comments, provided they are prepared to identify themselves.

Since the start of the trial, 20 submitted manuscripts have been posted on the trial's website (http://blogs.nature.com/nature/peerreview/trial) encompassing a host of disciplines including immunology, applied physics, neuroscience, astronomy, ecology and structural biology. Twelve comments on these manuscripts have been published on the site.