ArticlePloS one2020
Peer review and preprint policies are unclear at most major journals.
Article in PloS one, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 16 papers.
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
16 citing papers in PubMed.
- Awareness, Experiences, and Attitudes Toward Preprints Among Medical Academics: Convergent Mixed Methods Study.JMIRx med · 2026Article
- Preprint policies across journals and publishers in ecology and evolutionary biology.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2025Article
- When goodbye comes too soon: How to wrap up science projects quickly.PLoS biology · 2025Article
- The promise of community-driven preprints in ecology and evolution.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2025Article
- Recommendations for accelerating open preprint peer review to improve the culture of science.PLoS biology · 2024Article
- Article
- The use and acceptability of preprints in health and social care settings: A scoping review.PloS one · 2023Article
- Motivations, concerns and selection biases when posting preprints: A survey of bioRxiv authors.PloS one · 2022Article
- Mind the gender gap: COVID-19 lockdown effects on gender differences in preprint submissions.PloS one · 2022Article
- The Academic, Societal and Animal Welfare Benefits of Open Science for Animal Science.Frontiers in veterinary science · 2022Article
- Adjusting the use of preprints to accommodate the 'quality' factor in response to COVID-19.Journal of Taibah University Medical Sciences · 2021Article
- How to bring peer review ghostwriters out of the dark.Molecular biology of the cell · 2021Article
- Peer Review in Law Journals.Frontiers in research metrics and analytics · 2021Article
- Article
- Assessment of Preprint Policies of Top-Ranked Clinical Journals.JAMA network open · 2020Article
- Open up: a survey on open and non-anonymized peer reviewing.Research integrity and peer review · 2020Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
7 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Clear and findable publishing policies are important for authors to choose appropriate journals for publication. We investigated the clarity of policies of 171 major academic journals across disciplines regarding peer review and preprinting. 31.6% of journals surveyed do not provide information on the type of peer review they use. Information on whether preprints can be posted or not is unclear in 39.2% of journals. 58.5% of journals offer no clear information on whether reviewer identities are revealed to authors. Around 75% of journals have no clear policy on co-reviewing, citation of preprints, and publication of reviewer identities. Information regarding practices of open peer review is even more scarce, with <20% of journals providing clear information. Having found a lack of clear information, we conclude by examining the implications this has for researchers (especially early career) and the spread of open research practices.
Indexed as
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.