ArticleNature communications2019
The effect of publishing peer review reports on referee behavior in five scholarly journals.
Article in Nature communications, 2019. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 44 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
44 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- Co-reviewing and ghostwriting by early-career researchers in the peer review of manuscripts.eLife · 2019Pooled it
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- Reviewer recommendations and editorial outcomes in peer review: a longitudinal analysis of agreement and disagreement across review rounds.Research integrity and peer review · 2026Article
- Double anonymous peer review inJournal of vascular surgery cases and innovative techniques · 2026Article
- Beyond predatory journals: peer review transparency as a preventive strategy for editorial integrity in scholarly communication.Frontiers in research metrics and analytics · 2026Article
- Does the disconnect between the peer-reviewed label and reality explain the peer review crisis, and can open peer review or preprints resolve it? A narrative review.Naunyn-Schmiedeberg's archives of pharmacology · 2026Review
- Opening the review: perceptions and challenges of Open Science at CSP.Cadernos de saude publica · 2026Article
- On the determinants of journal rejection rates: evidence from the Journal of Financial Economics.Financial innovation · 2026Article
- The value of joint peer review between early career researchers and supervisors.Trends in cell biology · 2025Article
- The academic impact of Open Science: a scoping review.Royal Society open science · 2025Review
- Messing with Merton: The intersection between open science practices and Mertonian values.Accountability in research · 2024Article
- Bias of AI-generated content: an examination of news produced by large language models.Scientific reports · 2024Article
- Behavioral consequences of second-person pronouns in written communications between authors and reviewers of scientific papers.Nature communications · 2024Article
- Prejudice, Interests, Jealousy: Inappropriate Peer Reviewers May Be Exacerbating Inequality in Academic Publication in Health Research.Journal of Korean medical science · 2023Article
- Data, measurement and empirical methods in the science of science.Nature human behaviour · 2023Review
- Article
- Monitoring the impact of climate extremes and COVID-19 on statewise sentiment alterations in water pollution complaints.NPJ clean water · 2023Article
- Capacity Building in Peer-review: A Student-Led Journal Report.Medical science educator · 2022Article
- Research funders should be more transparent: a plea for open applications.Royal Society open science · 2022Review
- Does peer review improve the statistical content of manuscripts? A study on 27 467 submissions to four journals.Royal Society open science · 2022Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
5 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
To increase transparency in science, some scholarly journals are publishing peer review reports. But it is unclear how this practice affects the peer review process. Here, we examine the effect of publishing peer review reports on referee behavior in five scholarly journals involved in a pilot study at Elsevier. By considering 9,220 submissions and 18,525 reviews from 2010 to 2017, we measured changes both before and during the pilot and found that publishing reports did not significantly compromise referees' willingness to review, recommendations, or turn-around times. Younger and non-academic scholars were more willing to accept to review and provided more positive and objective recommendations. Male referees tended to write more constructive reports during the pilot. Only 8.1% of referees agreed to reveal their identity in the published report. These findings suggest that open peer review does not compromise the process, at least when referees are able to protect their anonymity.
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.