Scholarly Communication Support: Planning, Conducting, Disseminating, Promoting, & Assessing Research

Single-Anonymized Vs. Double-Anonymized Review

In single anonymized peer review, the author does not know the reviewer's identity, but the reviewer does know the author's identity.

In double anonymized peer review, the author and reviewer are both ignorant of the other's identity.

These have traditionally been called single blind and double blind peer review, and those terms will still be encountered, though many are moving away from the ableism of the term "blind."

Open Peer Review (OPR)

Open Peer Review is an evolving approach to the review of scholarly publications. Unlike blind and double-blind review systems, OPR makes both the author and reviewer identities known. This may be done during review or after an article is published; the specific implementation of OPR varies among journals, with some even providing platforms for non-referee public commentary on a published article. 

"Signed review" is a related term sometimes used when the reviewer is identified.

Supporters believe this transparency may help to improve reviewer accountability, decrease editorial and reviewer bias, and increase speed of review. The approach of developmental peer review additionally treats open review as a way to help less experienced authors develop their skills in open dialog with reviewers. 

Being identified may also help reviewers to receive more visibility for this professional service, especially with the rise of various tools for verifying and crediting reviewer activity. 

F1000 Research, an open publishing platform in the life sciences, is just one example of OPR in action.

Be aware of OPR as an author, as well as when you may take on the reviewer's role--If you are given the choice of participating in this review model, you should know the potential benefits or risks that it may pose for you and your work. 

Publishing Peer Review Comments

Should a reviewer's anonymous comments be published with an article as part of the scientific record? Some say yes.

Post-Publication Peer Review

Some platforms support peer review commentary on research after it is published, which can help to facilitate discussion about the quality, methodology, and findings of research.

As Bonnie Swoger writes on Scientific American's Information Culture blog, "In the early days of scientific societies (i.e. the 17th century), scientists would share their experimental results with each other at meetings, and receive feedback about their experiments in person. (The scientific journal wasn’t invented until later.) As the scientific community grew, it was impossible for everyone to be in the same room to hear about results, and so the amount of immediate feedback offered was limited to a few conferences or other gatherings. Recently, publishers, scientific societies and entrepreneurs have begun using the web to bring back the era of immediate feedback: so-called 'post-publication peer review.'" 

Receiving peer review feedback can be a unique (and sometimes difficult) experience.

The resources below will help you understand how to receive the constructive criticism of your peers and how to respond to their suggestions.

"Reviewers’ comments are often extremely valuable, but some can be hard to address, unclear, or even misinformed. To get published, authors are left to piece everything back together and win the reviewers over. The only way to succeed is through communication. In this webinar, Peter Gorsuch of Gorsuch Scientific (www.gorsuchscientific.com) will share communication tips to help authors ease the review process from start to finish: within the initial draft, after receipt of the reviews, and particularly, within the response to reviewers."

Coercive citation practices describe situations in which an author feels pressure to add superfluous citations to their paper in order to get published. This coercion may come from peer reviewers, seeking to increase citations to their own work, or from editors seeking to bolster citations to their journal.

Note that not all citation recommendations are coercive: reviewer or editor criticism regarding the need to add missing citations to relevant literature may be part of an acceptable critique.

"In an effort to promote their journal’s visibility via a higher Impact Factor, some journal editors ask new authors submitting manuscripts to their journal to embed inappropriate citations in their papers. When an editor practices leverage over an author before issuing a disposition about reject/accept, then that can easily feel coercive."

- Caven Mcloughlin, 9 Oct 2017, "How to identify coercive citation requests from an editor," Editage Insights

Nuts and Bolts

If you want to start contributing to peer review service, these resources will help you learn the practical steps.

Standards and Best Practices

In addition to the "nuts and bolts," it's important to be aware of professional standards and best practices.

Although some aspects may vary between disciplines, the resources below will help you understand some standard best practices.

Video: How to Peer Review Like a Pro (17 min)

Video: Behind Every Paper is a Person (1:28)

Tools for Crediting Reviewers

Although peer review is first and foremost provided as a service to the discipline and its ongoing scholarly conversation, it can also benefit reviewers to be able to verify and be acknowledged for this service.

The following resources address methods of verifying review activity and giving credit for review service.