Open Peer Review Models

In a previous post, we covered editorial and anonymous forms of review. In this post we'll look at open peer review, a version of which we use at Kairos. But as with anonymous review, there are three main approaches:

• Partially open
• Fully open
• Crowd-sourced

We like to use the metaphor of a door when explaining open peer review to people for the first time—peer review can be fully closed (as in forms of anonymous peer review), partially or fully open (as we describe below), or taken off its hinges entirely (which is how some people feel about crowd-sourced peer review, also explained below). 

In the Standard Terminology for Peer Review document (which we discussed at length in the previous post), the National Information Standards Organization (NISO) indicated the haziness around language for types of open peer review, and in that document, open review is embedded within several categories that still require parsing by users and there it does not openly (haha) discuss openness but instead refers users to the options of highlighting the visibility of reviewer, author, or editor identities in a category called identity transparency. 

We believe that calling out the open nature of open peer review is important, because of the qualities openness affords scholarly work. The HUMetricsHSS project said it well: “[I]f our metrics are not shaped by our core values, our values will be distorted by our metrics.” The HUMetricsHSS team elaborated on the values of openness with the following key terms: Accountability, Candor, Learning from Failure, Open Process, Open Source, and Transparency. In addition to Openness, the project team outlines four additional values in a framework to transform the academy: Equity, Collegiality, Soundness and Community. Each of these values can be interrogated locally at different levels of scholarly work (i.e., committee, department, program, college, university, organization, etc.). 

For the purposes of peer review, we find openness to overlap quite well with every other values in the framework of academic transformation, as we will describe in more detail in forthcoming posts. It is important for scholars and publishers of all ranks to remind ourselves of our ability to enact change and stand for our values in times when our rights and ability to lead are eroding.

For the editors at Kairos, openness in peer review and other editorial processes is fundamental to its mission and has helped us create a strong community that is accountable to and collegial with each other, and equitable and sound in its processes. And that’s why we want to explain further what different models of open peer review are, in the hopes that others see the benefits of such transparency as a way to help transform scholarly publishing for the sake of our disciplines and communities.

Before we get there, though, one thing we want to make sure is clear:

Open Access and Open Review Are Not The Same

We've found through our decades of working in digital publishing that folks often conflate anything that begins with the word "open" to mean the same thing. Open Access, Open Review, Open Source, Open Data...these terms are NOT synonymous. Open is the adjective, not the noun, and it refers to the quality of the thing—its openness, its transparency. Here's a quick primer to keep these things straight:

• Open Access = a digital publishing business model (which we detail in this post) that makes research openly available on the Web.
• Open Source = (source) code that others can use or adapt to build their own programs/platforms/software.
• Open Data = un-analyzed, raw or aggregate data (and the like) from research projects that is made openly available on the Web.
• Open Review = scholarly peer-review models that prioritize transparency and sharing of author and reviewer identities.

It's this last one we want to focus on during Peer Review Week. Throughout this week, we will post on each of the open review models–partially open, fully open, and crowdsourced. Let us know which is your favorite!

Postscript: Cheryl is working with the Council of Editors of Learned Journals (CELJ) on a massive survey about peer review that will be relevant for humanities (and humanistically oriented social science) journal authors, editors, reviewers, and publishers alike! It will be released in the next few weeks, and we hope as many people who identify with those categories will take the survey to help us transform peer review into a more inclusive, beautiful process through the data collection. Check out information on this survey and to get updates on its release by following CELJ on BlueSky or visiting the CELJ website about this Mellon-funded project!