Archives des mots-clés : Open peer review

Ants-Review: A Privacy-Oriented Protocol for Incentivized Open Peer Reviews on Ethereum

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Authors  : Bianca Trovò, Nazzareno Massari

Peer review is a necessary and essential quality control step for scientific publications but lacks proper incentives. Indeed, the process, which is very costly in terms of time and intellectual investment, not only is not remunerated by the journals but it is also not openly recognized by the academic community as a relevant scientific output for a researcher.

Therefore, scientific dissemination is affected in timeliness, quality and fairness. Here, to solve this issue, we propose a blockchain-based incentive system that rewards scientists for peer reviewing other scientists’ work and that builds up trust and reputation.

We designed a privacy-oriented protocol of smart contracts called Ants-Review that allows authors to issue a bounty for open anonymous peer reviews on Ethereum.

If requirements are met, peer reviews will be accepted and paid by the approver proportionally to their assessed quality. To promote ethical behaviour and inclusiveness the system implements a gamified mechanism that allows the whole community to evaluate the peer reviews and vote for the best ones.

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-71593-9_2

Which aspects of the Open Science agenda are most relevant to scientometric research and publishing? An opinion paper

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Authors : Lutz Bornmann, Raf Guns, Michael Thelwall, Dietmar Wolfram

Open Science is an umbrella term that encompasses many recommendations for possible changes in research practices, management, and publishing with the objective to increase transparency and accessibility.

This has become an important science policy issue that all disciplines should consider. Many Open Science recommendations may be valuable for the further development of research and publishing but not all are relevant to all fields.

This opinion paper considers the aspects of Open Science that are most relevant for scientometricians, discussing how they can be usefully applied.

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1162/qss_e_00121

Revealing Reviewers’ Identities as Part of Open Peer Review and Analysis of the Review Reports

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Authors :  Cezary Bolek, Dejan Marolov, Monika Bolek, Jovan Shopovski

This research article is aimed at comparing review reports, in which the identity of the reviewers is revealed to the authors of the papers, with those where the reviewers decided to remain anonymous.

The review reports are gathered as part of the peer review process of the European Scientific Journal (ESJ). This journal maintains a single-blind peer review procedure and optional open review. Reviewers are familiar with the names of the authors but not vice versa. When sending the review reports, the reviewers can opt to reveal their identity to the authors.

The sample of 343 review reports from members of the ESJ editorial board, gathered within the period of May to July 2019, were analysed. The data analysis was performed using the Python programing language based on NumPy, Pandas, and Scipy packages.

Half of the reviewers decided to choose the open option and reveal their names to the authors of the papers. The other half remained anonymous. The results show that female reviewers more often decide to remain anonymous than their male colleagues. However, there is no significant difference in the review reports on the basis of gender or country of institutional affiliation of the reviewers.

Revealing identities did not make a difference in the reviewers’ point appraisal in the review reports. This difference was not significant. However, a majority of the reviewers who recommended rejection in their review reports were not willing to reveal their identities.

Even more, those reviewers who revealed their identity were more likely to recommend in their review reports acceptance without revision or a minor revision.

URL : Revealing Reviewers’ Identities as Part of Open Peer Review and Analysis of the Review Reports

DOI : http://doi.org/10.18352/lq.10347

Open peer review: promoting transparency in open science

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Authors : Dietmar Wolfram, Peiling Wang, Adam Hembree, Hyoungjoo Park

Open peer review (OPR), where review reports and reviewers’ identities are published alongside the articles, represents one of the last aspects of the open science movement to be widely embraced, although its adoption has been growing since the turn of the century.

This study provides the first comprehensive investigation of OPR adoption, its early adopters and the implementation approaches used. Current bibliographic databases do not systematically index OPR journals, nor do the OPR journals clearly state their policies on open identities and open reports.

Using various methods, we identified 617 OPR journals that published at least one article with open identities or open reports as of 2019 and analyzed their wide-ranging implementations to derive emerging OPR practices.

The findings suggest that: (1) there has been a steady growth in OPR adoption since 2001, when 38 journals initially adopted OPR, with more rapid growth since 2017; (2) OPR adoption is most prevalent in medical and scientific disciplines (79.9%); (3) five publishers are responsible for 81% of the identified OPR journals; (4) early adopter publishers have implemented OPR in different ways, resulting in different levels of transparency.

Across the variations in OPR implementations, two important factors define the degree of transparency: open identities and open reports. Open identities may include reviewer names and affiliation as well as credentials; open reports may include timestamped review histories consisting of referee reports and author rebuttals or a letter from the editor integrating reviewers’ comments.

When and where open reports can be accessed are also important factors indicating the OPR transparency level. Publishers of optional OPR journals should add metric data in their annual status reports.

URL : Open peer review: promoting transparency in open science

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-020-03488-4

Peer review and preprint policies are unclear at most major journals

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Authors : Thomas Klebel, Stefan Reichmann, Jessica Polka, Gary McDowell, Naomi Penfold, Samantha Hindle, Tony Ross-Hellauer

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 coreviewing, 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.

URL : Peer review and preprint policies are unclear at most major journals

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.01.24.918995

Open Practices and Resources for Collaborative Digital Pathology

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Author : Raphaël Marée

In this paper, we describe open practices and open resources in the field of digital pathology with a specific focus on approaches that ease collaboration in research and education settings.

Our review includes open access journals and open peer review, open-source software (libraries, desktop tools, and web applications), and open access collections. We illustrate applications and discuss current limitations and perspectives.

URL : Open Practices and Resources for Collaborative Digital Pathology

DOI : https://doi.org/10.3389/fmed.2019.00255

A history and development of peer-review process

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Author : Jana Siladitya

The paper shows the importance of peer review process in the scholarly communication system and discusses both the closed and the newly emerging open peer review models.

It also examines the peer review system at the scholarly academies or societies in their nomination systems for prizes, rewards, etc. It also discusses the various facets of the newly developed open peer review models now prevalent in various journals.

The paper may help to understand and appreciate the role played by peer review in the scholarly communication system and the efforts being made to make it more transparent.

URI : http://hdl.handle.net/10760/39332