Peer review is the most significant process that the academic publishing community adopted to guarantee published research is valid, original and rigorously evaluated. Traditionally, the peer review process was done behind a closed door, and it is common for journals to adopt ‘blind’ peer review practices. For example, single-blind review only keeps reviewer identities from authors; double-blind review keeps both author and reviewer identities from each other. The reviews and the author’s responses will not be accessible to readers. These practices are anonymous, confidential, and selective.
Open peer review (OPR) is an umbrella term for various combinations of open practices in the review process in pursuit of increased transparency and accountability. They include seven core elements (Ross-Hellauer, 2017):
Open identities: authors and reviewers are aware of each other’s identity.
Open reports: review reports are published alongside the relevant article.
Open participation: the wider community are able to contribute to the review process.
Open interaction: direct reciprocal discussion between author(s) and reviewers, and/or between reviewers, is allowed and encouraged.
Open pre-review manuscripts: manuscripts are made immediately available (e.g., via preprint servers like arXiv) in advance of formal peer review procedures.
Open final version commenting: review or commenting on final ‘version of record’ publications.
Open platforms (‘decoupled review’): review is facilitated by a different organisational entity than the venue of publication.
Benefits
Increased transparency and accountability
When the review process becomes transparent, including the review reports and reviewer identities, reviewers are more accountable for their comments. It could help prevent conflict of interests and biased or inaccurate reviews.
More constructive and efficient quality assurance
Revealing the review contents and reviewer identities may potentially drive reviewers to make more constructive feedback and provide more substantiating evidence to support their comments. Direct communications between authors and reviewers could also enhance communications, reduce inconsistency and confusion and be timesaving.
Wider and more inclusive discussion
Open commenting enables the wider research community to comment and engage in constructive dialogue, facilitating more inclusive discussions.
Provision of training opportunity and professional development
Since review reports are openly accessible, they could be a training opportunity for early career researchers who may be less experienced in conducting reviews.
Increased reviewers’ incentive for credits
When review activities alongside the reviewer’s identity can be made visible and citable, reviewers can receive credits and recognitions that can be added into their profiles and CVs.
Challenges 
Discouraging honest feedback
When reviewers’ identities and their review reports are openly published, there are concerns that reviewers may tend to be less critical and more hesitant to provide candid feedback.
Risks of reviewer retaliation
Reviewers may fear retaliation if they have given an unfavourable review with their names visible. For instance, an early career researcher may be hesitant to review or even provide critical comments on senior researchers’ work for fear of negative impact.
Concerns on threats of negative career consequences
Authors may worry if they may receive negative career consequences if they receive critical reviews from reviewers, or even inappropriate comments and feedback that are not scientifically sound from others in an open model. It particularly concerns junior researchers who are dependent on senior scientists for opportunities and advancement (PLOS, 2024).
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Anonymous Single Anonymized: Reviewers know the authors' identities, but reviewer names are protected. Double Anonymized: Reviewer and author names are protected |
Signed Reviewers sign their comments. Authors receive reviewer names in the decision letter. |
Collaborative Reviewers collaborate and submit joint comments, or in some cases confer with authors and editors during the review process. |
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Portable Reviewers are sought by an organization or journal and shared with any journals that require them later on. |
Published Reviewer comments and/or names are published with the article or preprint. |
Post-Publication After a manuscript is posted the community reviews the research in an open forum. Reviewer names are usually published with their comments. |
Source: Adapted from PLOS
Adoption
| Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics | BioMed Central (BMC) | BMJ |
| eLife | EMBOpress | GigaScience |
| MDPI | Nature (several journals) | PeerJ |
| PLOS | Royal Society (several journals) |
On trial
| Elsevier (a trial on 5 journals) | Wiley (a pilot on 60+ journals) |
Initiatives
| F1000Research | Open Research Europe | Peer Community In |
Reference:
ASAPbio. (2018). Open letter on the publication of peer review reports. http://asapbio.org/letter
Polka, J. K., Kiley, R., Konforti, B., Stern, B., & Vale, R. D. (2018). Publish peer reviews. Nature (London), 560(7720), 545–547. https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-018-06032-w
Ross-Hellauer T. (2017). What is open peer review? A systematic review. F1000Research, 6, 588. https://doi.org/10.12688/f1000research.11369.2
Ross-Hellauer, & T., Görögh, E. (2019) Guidelines for open peer review implementation. Research Integrity and Peer Review 4, 4. https://doi.org/10.1186/s41073-019-0063-9
Schmidt, B., Ross-Hellauer, T., van Edig, X., & Moylan, E. C. (2018). Ten considerations for open peer review. F1000Research, 7, 969. https://doi.org/10.12688/f1000research.15334.1
