Searching for post-publication peer review, and a new use thereof

PubMed Commons has a search argument you can use to find articles with comments:
has_user_comments[sb]

You can click that link to try it yourself.

As of this writing, there are about 650 comments on all of PubMed Commons. I don’t know how this compares to PubPeer (I wish they had a similar tool), but I’m guessing they’re both around the same order of magnitude.

Many of the comments on PubMed Commons are from the authors themselves, letting people know that they have made code and/or data available online (e.g., this, this, and this). This is an interesting use for the system. It’s a centralized way that authors can update colleagues on a particular paper/study.

PubPeer still has more interesting– or at least more provocative– comments, probably because they allow a degree of anonymity. PubMed Commons is all real, verified names.