We ’re open! Open peer review revisited

Over 15 years ago, BioMed Central was the first publisher to openly post named peer reviewer reports alongside published articles as part of a ‘pre-publication history’ for all medical journals in the BMC series. Fiona Godlee, then Editorial Director for Medicine, set out her reasoning in a commentary published in 2002. She cited four main reasons in support of open peer review:     Ethical superiority – open peer review makes the reviewer (and the editor) more accountable for the peer review and decision-making process     Lack of adverse effects – it doesn’t decrease the ‘quality’ of the review     Feasibility – it can work in practice     Credit – recognition for the work peer reviewers do. Over the years, other biology and medical titles within BioMed Central’s academic journals also adopted open peer review, including Biology Direct, Environmental Health, and Trials. Other publishers have also championed open peer review in various guises (see timeline in Eva Amsen’s F1000Research blog here). As part of the on-going improvement of our journal websites, our technology team spent time looking at the way open peer review was highlighted. The User Experience team did a lot of research and testing with users to understand how they wanted to see and access information regarding open peer review. BioMed Central technology team at workBy Ruth Rowland Ironically, although the journals involved set out to promote openness, the feedback from...
Source: BioMed Central Blog - Category: Journals (General) Authors: Tags: Open Access Publishing open peer review Source Type: blogs