The open and transparent review process seems novel and uncommon; why is it so important for the journal?
(A2) There are a number of reasons: (I) To ensure quality, reviewers have to invest substantial time to judge the quality of a manuscript and provide fruitful comments and inspiration to the authors. By doing so, they directly contribute to the quality of the manuscript and hence should be acknowledged for their work. If writing reviews, however, becomes an obligatory exercise (and the review load seems to increase) this may have negative consequences for the quality of reviews on the long term. Since reviews for Semantic Web – Interoperability, Usability, Applicability are generally non-anonymous and publicly accessible, and since reviewers are explicitly acknowledged in the final versions of the papers, the reviewers receive at least a little bit of visibility and acknowledgement of their contribution. (II) Fair reviews require that there is neither a positive nor negative conflict of interest between the reviewers and the authors. To keep track of who co-authored, supervised, or org
