Abstract
Open peer review does not just mean publishing existing reviewer reports, but should also lead to writing reports primarily for the public. We make a specific proposal for structured reviewer reports, based on the three criteria validity, interest and clarity.This post is partly based on a joint proposal with Anton Akhmerov for improving the structure of reviewer reports at SciPost. Feedback from Jean-Sébastien Caux on that proposal is gratefully acknowledged.
Benefits of open peer review: the obvious and the less obvious
In the traditional model of academic peer review, reviewers’ reports on the submitted article are kept confidential, and this is a big source of inefficiency and waste. If the article is published, the readers can neither assess how rigorous the process was, nor benefit directly from the reviewers’ insights. If it is rejected, the work has to start all over again at another journal.
Open peer review, defined here as making the reports public, could help journals remedy the penury of reviewers: if applied to rejected articles, by avoiding duplicating effort, and if coupled with naming reviewers, by giving them better incentives to do the work. However, the consequences of open peer review may be more far-reaching. Published reports can indeed be used for evaluating the article’s interest and quality. In aggregate, they could be used for evaluating journals and researchers. For these purposes, they would certainly be better than citation counts.
