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Open letter on the publication of peer review reports

On February 7-9, 2018, editors, publisher, funders, and researchers gathered at HHMI Headquarters in Chevy Chase, MD to discuss innovations in peer review. A clear majority of participants at the meeting agreed that publishing peer review reports (ie, the contents of peer review, whether anonymized or not), would benefit the research community by increasing transparency of the assessment process.

These benefits include 1) increased reviewer and editorial accountability, 2) training opportunities to educate students about the peer review process, 3) enhancing readers’ understanding of the article in the context of the field, and 4) a pathway to providing credit for peer review. Evidence suggests that publishing peer review reports does not change the quality of reviewers’ assessment.

FAQ about publishing peer reviews can be found here.

A large hand lifts a dark cloth revealing a scene with a person at a desk using a computer, with two figures standing behind. The scene is bright against the dark background, suggesting discovery or exposure.

Illustration by David Parkins. Click here to read a commentary on the benefits of publishing peer review.

Letter

We, the undersigned journals, recognise the benefits of transparency in the peer review process. Therefore, we enable or undertake to enable the publication of all of the content of peer review, but not necessarily the names of reviewers (this is also called open peer review reports) and author responses alongside final, published articles.

We recognize that implementations of published peer review reports may vary—with some journals mandating it for all published articles, while others may offer authors an opt-in or opt-out option—providing an opportunity to compare experiments across different journal policies and fields. In the pursuit of best practices, we commit to sharing information about community responses to varied implementations.

We encourage other journals to join us in this initiative. We hope that our action inspires the community, including researchers, research funders, and research institutions, to recognize the benefits of published peer review reports for all parts of the research system.

Signatories

Use the small arrows next to column headers to sort the table alphabetically. Please email [email protected] to join the list. Journals must be indexed on DOAJ or PubMed. New journals, which have not yet been approved by PubMed or DOAJ, will be considered if the publisher has an existing track record of publishing content indexed by these services.