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Dear Igor Radun many thanks for this interesting technical question which is certainly of broad general interest to many RG members. Personally I wondering: Do I really want "open peer-review"? What if I suggest rejection of a paper written by a good colleague of mine? Wouldn't this potentially cause hatred among colleagues? I acted as a reviewer for ca. 40+ chemical journals in the past 30 years or so. Personally I would refuse reviewing and further research papers if the peer-review process was open. Clearly open peer-review has pros and cons, but in my personal opinion the cons prevail. I'm sure that many other RG members will have a different opinion on this.

For more general information please have a look at the following useful article:

Perspective: The pros and cons of open peer review

Article The pros and cons of open peer review

This article is freely available as public full text on RG. Also please see:

Open Peer Reviews and Blind Peer Reviews: Merits and Demerits

http://researcherslinks.com/current-issues/Open-Peer-Reviews-and-Blind-Peer-Reviews/25/4/850/html

Thank you! Yes, you are right, that's one of the cons of open review. As I understand, there are many discussions about pros and cons of open peer review. One of the most commonly mentioned pros is transparency. However, if we support transparency, why do we go only half-way (i.e., full transparency only for accepted papers)?

This half-transparency protects publishers, authors of accepted papers, and reviewers of accepted papers, but offers no rights to authors of rejected papers.

Why authors should "keep the identity and comments of peer reviewers confidential"?

I would like to hear arguments in support of this confidentiality rule.

This has been already discussed in numerous posts. It would be waste of time to give the similar answer to each similar question. Just one new argument. Doing research you join a scientific community which has its own traditions. You are supposed to follow these traditions. Some traditions decelerate the progress of science and should be reconsidered. However, these changes should not be revolutionary but evolutionary. There are hundreds of new journals. They can introduce whatever in their editorial policy and we'll see what happens

I am sorry I have asked the question that "has been already discussed in numerous posts." Perhaps, you could have posted a few links instead of just saying that;-)

Anyway, I am not aware of discussions about why authors should "keep the identity and comments of peer reviewers confidential". I am aware of the COPE's paper

https://publicationethics.org/case/author-rejected-paper-publicly-names-and-criticises-peer-reviewer

Rules, including this one, are to be followed, but I would like to know what was the reason for making this rule. Just trying to understand.

I meant similar (or related) questions not exactly yours.

Resent related discussion.

https://www.researchgate.net/post/Is_blind_peer-review_honest_Does_it_help_or_disfavor_achieving_an_objective_review_of_journal_papers

"what was the reason for making this rule." I provided one of the reason in my answer.

Thanks for the link!

However, they don't address my very specific question in that discussion. I am also not sure I understand where/how did you answer my question. Did you mean this: "these changes should not be revolutionary but evolutionary"? That's not very helpful.

As one can read in the COPE document I mentioned, it seems the publisher changed their guidelines after one negative experience: "The first author of a paper rejected by our journal publicly identified one of the four peer reviewers for the paper by name. She did this during a media interview conducted after the paper was published by another journal. The first author implied in that interview and subsequently on Twitter that the paper was rejected because of that person's review and also claimed the reviewer did not reveal relevant COIs."

However, I am interested in broader discussion about this rule. Pros and cons. Is this good rule or it only protects publishers and reviewers? Also do authors must follow this confidentiality rule in all cases. Imagine if a reviewer insults you, makes racist or sexists comments etc., and the editor and publisher don't do anything about it... Can you write a blog about it and name this reviewer who made racists? Can you share their racist peer-review? Only part of it or an entire review? Can publishers or reviewers sue you? And so on... I have too many questions:)

I actually started very much the same discussion a year ago, but feel I haven't gotten much out of it. I thought this time might be different. I am really interested to know what others think.

https://www.researchgate.net/post/Author_of_rejected_paper_publicly_names_criticises_peer_reviewer

Having done peer reviews for journals ranging from Chem. Rev, PLoS One, Wiley, Elsevier and a host of open-access journals, I usually agree to publisher requests for review attribution. As a member of the Publons platform, I do offer my reviews publicly when permitted by the journal publisher. Nevertheless, I understand why reviewers may not wish to have their identities revealed to the reviewed party, since many journals request authors to provide potential reviewers.

Each journal has its own editorial and ethical policy. If you disagree, don't submit your work to this journal. If you wish to change the policy, become the member of the Editorial Board and discuss your suggestion with them.

"Imagine if a reviewer insults you, makes racist or sexists comments etc., and the editor and publisher don't do anything about it... Can you write a blog about it and name this reviewer who made racists? " NO! You have to appeal to the publisher. If you are not satisfied you can sue the publisher. When you submit the manuscript, you sign an agreement. Read it before submitting.

Suing a publisher because they accepted a review with racist or sexist comments and didn't do anything about it? A researcher suing a publisher? You must be kidding:))) Anyway, that was just an example that came to my mind.

As far as I understand, you are saying that authors must follow the confidentiality rule no matter what reviewers, editors or publishers do. That's OK. Everyone has the right to have an opinion. As I said, I am interested to hear different opinions. I am not judging. At least I hope I don't:)

I want also to hear about cons and pros of this confidentiality rule. Do we just say that's their rule and you must follow it, or do we want to discuss about why do we have such a rule and what does that rule mean?

Who decides that the comments are "racist or sexist?" The author? "You must be kidding:)))"

"authors must follow the confidentiality rule" until the third side (court) makes a decision.

"do we want to discuss about why do we have such a rule" . Science is very conservative and follows numerous rules based in part on traditions. Scientific community is rather closed. In order to be accepted by this community you must prove that you deserve to be a member. it's not you who decides whether you are a scientist. The scientist are absolutely free to discuss any scientific problems. At the same time they must obey all rules, existing in the human society

Well Yurii V Geletii , sometimes racism or sexism is very clear

https://retractionwatch.com/2015/04/29/its-a-mans-world-for-one-peer-reviewer-at-least/

And OK, you made your point: even if reviewers, editors or publishers do something ethically or otherwise wrong, authors must follow the confidentiality rule "until the third side (court) makes a decision." Thank you for your opinion.

I hope I am accepted as a scientist by the scientific community and that I am allowed to start this kind of discussion on ResearchGate. I also hope that someone will tell their opinion about cons and pros of this confidentiality rule. I mean now when we established that only court can help the authors of rejected papers;-)

The court can't help to accept the rejected paper. The court can make a decision whether the reviewer's comments are "racism or sexist." Commonly, the editor sends the paper for another reviewer, who recommends what to do with this paper. Don't mix the science and jurisprudence.

Dear Igor Radun "I mean now when we established that only court can help the authors of rejected papers": Did you consider the possibility that the vast majority of all rejected articles are rejected because of poor scientific quality? Yes, low quality manuscripts do exist. They can be rejected e.g. due to clear lack of novelty (e.g. duplication of previous results or just boring routine work), poor technical quality (e.g. lack of scientific proof) and poor English style and grammar. As a reviewer I always tried to be as fair and objective as at all possible, but some manuscripts just deserve being rejected. In this context, please have a look at the following interesting link:

Fairness: An Essential Area for Better Peer Review

https://www.wiley.com/network/latest-content/fairness-an-essential-area-for-better-peer-review

One more word about "transparency": Full transparency sounds great, and transparency is highly popular. However, I personally do not want full transparency when this means disclosing my name and my peer-reviews to the general public and non-experts.

"The court can't help to accept the rejected paper."

I don't think I said that:) And I certainly didn't mean that:) When I wrote "only court can help the authors of rejected papers," I meant to help them regarding the confidentiality issue, not their paper. Discussion is all the time about the confidentiality rule and whether an author has to follow it in all circumstances.

I don't mix science and jurisprudence. You are just misinterpreting my writing.

Frank T. Edelmann It seems there is some misunderstanding here. As I wrote to Yurii V Geletii I talk about the confidentiality rule not about whether the paper was rightfully rejected or not.

Yurii V Geletii wrote "'authors must follow the confidentiality rule' until the third side (court) makes a decision."

So I replied that we have established now that "only court can help the authors of rejected papers" obviously regarding the confidentiality rule, not their papers because that's what Yurii V Geletii talked about... and what I talk about all the time.

Perhaps my English is not good enough, so you keep misinterpreting my writing. Anyway this seems to be useless discussion leading us nowhere.

I would love to know who has reviewed my work. But I wouldn't be happy if someone knew I was reviewing his/her work. So there is a conflict of interest. Therefore, it's better to stick to the current rules for reviewing works.

Mirosław Grzesik That is relevant for the discussion about whether we would like to have open review or not.

My question in this thread is about the confidentiality rule when open review already exists.

Why authors should "keep the identity and comments of peer reviewers confidential"?

So far I heard (i) journals can make rules as they wish, (ii) if you submit your manuscript, you must under all circumstances follow the confidentiality rule if the journal has it, (iii) authors must follow the confidentiality rule "until the third side (court) makes a decision."

Nobody has actually answered to my questions about why do we have this confidentiality rule, do we need it, what does it mean for science, pros and cons...

Frank T. Edelmann What if I suggest rejection of a paper written by a good colleague of mine? Wouldn't this potentially cause hatred among colleagues?

I find this to be manifesting something quite problematic about academic culture. Academia should have a culture where separation of (especially scientific) subject matters and personal feelings and relationships should be maximized as far as possible. For this I think open review would be actually beneficial; the community could also assess somewhat who are able to keep these separate and react accordingly.

However, I don't know if discussing about peer review in its current format is that relevant. The system is clearly broken and already in death throes, and was never a very good system anyway. Something akin to RG with recommendations and discussions would probably be a lot better way of communally assessing work. Sadly RG probably is not suitable for this: they are now explicitly adding features (RG+) where you can pay your way around fair communal assessment. This is quite ridiculous in the first place and shows a poor judgement and appreciation of scientific community and its importance. Even the broken peer review and journal publishing managed to keep money mostly out of the process. Hence my proposal for the community is to not let RG play a role in communal quality control and ignore their metrics altogether unless they very clearly show that they are not willing to sacrifice the scientific community for business purposes.

I have had some shocking reviewers and editors over the years. Some journals are nothing more than chums networks.

Dear Jami Pekkanen, "Academia should have a culture where separation of (especially scientific) subject matters and personal feelings and relationships should be maximized as far as possible." This sounds great and should perhaps be aimed for. However, even scientists live in a real world where envy and egoism are wide-spread. Who wants to start with such a project? Who wants to be among the first whose names as reviewers are disclosed to the authors? I have no idea what the future will bring in the field of scientific publishing and peer-review. Fortunately I don't need to know because I'm too old for a new system. I did 40+ years of successful scientific publishing in chemistry under the old system and was quite happy with it. I never really wanted to know who reviewed our manuscripts. On the other hand, I was absolutely against disclosing my name as a reviewer to the authors. Needless to say that as a reviewer I always tried my best to be as fair and objective as possible. Apparently I did a good job, as various renowned journals continued to send me manuscripts for review over more than 30 years. Thus please go ahead trying to establish a new system, but don't count on me as an ally. 😎

There are many interesting points here about peer-review; however, I am interested in this specific questions when open review is already in place:

Why authors should "keep the identity and comments of peer reviewers confidential"?

So far I heard (i) journals can make rules as they wish, (ii) if you submit your manuscript, you must under all circumstances follow the confidentiality rule if the journal has it, (iii) authors must follow the confidentiality rule "until the third side (court) makes a decision."

Nobody has actually answered to my questions about why do we have this confidentiality rule, do we need it, what does it mean for science, pros and cons...

Frank T. Edelmann I do appreciate that the "human element" is unavoidable in any communal system. But I think it can be also harnessed for positive development, and lack of transparency usually in reality makes the effects of the "human element" worse. Envy and egoism should have social repercussions in the community, and such repercussions are probably quite effective in attenuating and preventing these unwanted behaviors.

I think there has been such a huge change in publishing that the old experiences are not necessary very applicable to the current state. The publish&perish along with massive business consolidation brought by huge profit margins of electronic publishing has quite totally perverted the system.

I get requests to review constantly, even though I'm not very prolific reviewer (lately I just stopped responding any non-personal requests), and not even very prolific publisher and not very far career-wise. Reviewers seem to be invited almost exclusively by suggestions made by authors, and with the stupendous volume editors probably have no time to do much more than routinely request the suggested reviewers, with no regard to "past performance", especially as it is not even available even to editors.

When I review, I typically disclose my name, as do quite many others at least on fields I work on. Have not seen much problems, and by my small sample transparent reviews tend to be also of better quality.

This is maybe something missing in Frank T. Edelmann's analysis. Sure there are bad papers that need to be rejected (or at least heavily revised), but there are also really really really bad reviewers. Oftentimes (almost more often than not) some reviewers just totally misunderstand the paper, but are very confident they understood it correctly and then just slam their misunderstanding in their review. Or OTOH many just probably don't really even read the paper and a one line "review" ("looks ok to me"), maybe along with some typographical comments. With the anonymity (and lack of editorial oversight in practice), doing a totally sub-par review carries no repercussions and bad reviewers just keep on doing bad reviews.

Igor Radun

Thank you for this very relevant question. This is a choice between full transparency vs. objectivity. Which is better for science? In my view, you cannot be completely objective if the authors and the readers will see all your comments about a paper. I certainly agree with Professor Frank T. Edelmann that the cons prevail over the pros in open peer review.

All types of peer review accommodate some sort of bias. Haffar et al. (2019) suggested further studies to find out the least biased peer review approach.

Haffar, S., Bazerbachi, F. & Murad, M. H. (2019). Peer review bias: A critical review. Mayo Clinic Proceedings, 94(4), 670–676. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.mayocp.2018.09.004

Best,

Dear All, it would be interesting to know how many scientists really want what is called here "full transparency"? Perhaps in this case transparency is a buzzword like sustainability etc. In my personal opinion confidentiality in scientific published in an absolute necessity and a matter of course. As soon as I submit my valuable research results to a journal I naturally expect that they are treated with absolute confidentiality. I also expect that the editor and reviewers comply with the journal's ethical guidelines. The research results must be kept confidential by everyone participating in the peer-review process until the article is officially published online.

For an example of ethical guidelines for peer-reviewers please have a look at the following useful link:

https://publicationethics.org/resources/guidelines-new/cope-ethical-guidelines-peer-reviewers

Also in this context please see the following interesting RG link:

Confidentiality Revisited

Article Confidentiality Revisited

A point of concern is that many good scientists, especially in non-English speaking countries, are not very proficient in English. Do you think it would not damage their reputation if their excellent comments (in terms of scientific/technical content) but written in poor English are made open to all readers?

One of the things I have learned here on RG is that people so easily drift into irrelevant and unrelated topics... If we scientists cannot stick to the topic and answer to a simple question, no matter how many times I repeat it...

This thread is not about which peer-review system is the best or optimal, it is not about cons and pros of open peer-review in general, or double-blind system... or whether you don't like this or that, or whether transparency is a buzz word or not...

This thread has started with a simple question and request. I want to hear about cons and pros of the confidentiality rule (i.e., "For rejected papers, we expect that authors will keep the identity and comments of peer reviewers confidential.") that is part of the open peer-review system adopted by BMJ.

For example, Victor B. Asio has nicely answered my question, he wrote: "A point of concern is that many good scientists, especially in non-English speaking countries, are not very proficient in English. Do you think it would not damage their reputation if their excellent comments (in terms of scientific/technical content) but written in poor English are made open to all readers?"

This is somewhat relevant comment; however, if the paper you review gets published, your review will anyway be published alongside them on bmj.com... so this issue is not specifically connected to the confidentiality rule I am interested in...

Other relevant answers were: (i) if you submit your manuscript, you must under all circumstances follow the confidentiality rule if the journal has it, (ii) authors must follow the confidentiality rule "until the third side (court) makes a decision."

If you are aware of any other cons and pros, please write them here, I will be very grateful.

Igor Radun The common confidentiality rules are very well described in PNAS

https://www.pnas.org/reviewers

This is relevant to your question. Which point are you disagree and want to discuss?

Yurii V Geletii

You write "The common confidentiality rules are very well described in PNAS."

And the rules are: "Confidentiality

Material under review is a privileged communication that should not be shared or discussed with anyone outside the designated review process unless necessary and approved by the editor. If you wish to consult a colleague or trainee for assistance with the review, please ensure they are free of any competing interest, agree to abide by PNAS policies, and note their name in the appropriate field in the review form. Reviewers may not retain copies of submitted manuscripts and may not use the knowledge of manuscript content for any purpose unrelated to the peer-review process. Although it is expected that the editor and/or reviewers will have access to the submitted material, authors have a reasonable expectation that the review process will remain strictly confidential. The review process is conducted anonymously for all submissions, except NAS members’ own contributions where the reviewers are known to the member author and their names are published. Reviewers are encouraged to keep their identities from outsiders or members of the press. If you are unsure about the policies for enlisting the help of others in the review process, contact PNAS."

That is a description of their confidentiality rule. This description does not answer my question... Should I repeat it again?

At present, no transparency, even partial and with additional conditions, is possible. The editor and reviewers would have to agree. But, as an author of a publication, I would sometimes like to discuss it with a reviewer. However, I did not have such a possibility. Moreover, as a reviewer, I allow the possibility of contacting the interested person regarding academic degrees and the title of professor.

Back to your question:

"For rejected papers, we expect that authors will keep the identity and comments of peer reviewers confidential."

->

Why authors should "keep the identity and comments of peer reviewers confidential"?"

You omitted in your question two important words" rejected papers."

Then, the correct question should be like that

Why authors of rejected papers should "keep the identity and comments of peer reviewers confidential"?

This is a completely different question than yours.

Yurii V Geletii

I thought it was clear that the authors of accepted papers don't have to "keep the identity and comments of peer reviewers confidential" because these are published along the published papers as explained before I asked my question.

My question referred to the authors of rejected papers as that is the only logical conclusion from the intro before the question. I was also clear several times in this thread.

"This half-transparency protects publishers, authors of accepted papers, and reviewers of accepted papers, but offers no rights to authors of rejected papers."

"So I replied that we have established now that "only court can help the authors of rejected papers"

"This thread has started with a simple question and request. I want to hear about cons and pros of the confidentiality rule (i.e., "For rejected papers, we expect that authors will keep the identity and comments of peer reviewers confidential.") that is part of the open peer-review system adopted by BMJ."

But let's argue just for the sake of arguing...

If you submitted a paper, you agreed with the journal rules. If the paper is rejected,

you still must follow the rules. If you want to publicly discuss your case, you must obtain the permissions of the journal and reviewer and must make the rejected paper available for the readers. The opinions of both sides should be equally presented. Where you can post all these information? What website? The disagreement on the scientific issues could be discussed only by professionals. The reviewer also must follow the ethical rules. If not, you have to address your problem to the Editor. If you disagree with an Editor, contact the publisher. If this does not work, you may sue the publisher, but still keep confidentiality.

If you want to have a full transparency of the reviewing process, submit your work to a journal, which has such policy.

However, all journals have pretty much similar rules. While, I'm sure that any predatory publisher would accept whatever you submit and you would not have any problems with reviewers. If you submit your work to the respectable journal, I guarantee you will have questions from reviewers.

I just don't understand how "a full transparency" can be practically achieved and how the rights of both parts can be protected.

I add the text below as an edited post.

Yours "I want to hear about cons and pros of the confidentiality rule"

I'm not sure any respectable journal would be able to find reviewers, which would agree with such full transparency.

Yurii V Geletii

You wrote: "I'm not sure any respectable journal would be able to find reviewers, which would agree with such full transparency."

Reviewers accepting an invitation from some BMJ journals are aware that their name and review will be published online if the paper gets published. This means their identity and written text are not only known to the authors, they will be known to anyone who has access to the journal.

After a reviewer reads a given paper, they make a decision whether the paper is publishable or not, and recommend rejection or revision:

• If they believe it is publishable and they recommend its acceptance, then they know it is likely their review will be published online. Do they then work more on polishing of their review, checking grammar and language, exclude irrelevant points, make it look more nice with a polite tone etc.?

• If they believe the paper is not publishable, they know that in highly competitive BMJ journals, a very critical review means the paper will very likely be rejected. So they might change their polite tone and criticize the work, but also the authors. They will make sure the paper doesn't get published. The nastier you get, the higher probability that nobody will ever learn about your nastiness.

To the best of my knowledge, in some previous studies, there were no differences in the quality of reviews when reviewers' identity was revealed to the authors vs. when the identity was not revealed. However, as I speculate, it might matter if your review and identity will be revealed to the whole world. You have to be sure you don't embarrass yourself in front of the whole academia, not only in front of editors and authors.

So, one of the things I wanted to discuss is this: could it be possible that if you recommend acceptance, you make sure your review is of high standard, but if you want to recommend rejection then you make sure you will 'kill' the paper by using every possible argument you can think of because you know the worst thing that might happen is that the authors will hate you... but if you hate/despise the authors, you don't care anyway. And no one else will know about your review with, for example, personal insults directed at the authors... You can call the authors idiots/imbeciles/whatever... and no one will find out about it unless you sue the editor/publisher. And no researcher will sue a large multinational publisher because a reviewer called you unintelligent and because an editor accepted such review.

For the sake of transparent discussion and advancement of science, one could argue if one agrees to evaluate others' work, then one should be able to defend it or at least allow others to point out flaws in your argumentation. So my point or question is whether this half-open peer-review is actually more damaging than beneficial. In my view, it only protects publishers who can justify their decision to publish certain papers by saying: "here are positive reviews of this study, don't blame us, blame these reviewers with names and reputation who recommended acceptance." On the other hand, by requiring from authors of rejected papers not to reveal identity of the reviewers and their reviews, they avoid any discussion about whether there were some irregularities in the process. They just say f** off, we don't want to discuss whether certain papers were rightfully rejected or not, we just want to back up our decisions to publish some papers by providing favorable reviews in order to shift the responsibility to reviewers who are named on our webpage... This is actually a very smart move from the point of publishers. But is that good for science or not, that's what I want to discuss... Perhaps, not anymore because this takes too much of my time:)))

This is a very enlightening and interesting discussion. I enjoyed reading the different reactions of the RG members. Thank you to Dr. Igor Radun for asking this very good question. I have learned many things here.

Thank you Luz G. Asio !

Dear Igor Radun thanks for your long response. I recommended it. I understand your arguments very well. I agree with you that the current procedure of accepting/ rejection papers is far from ideal and strongly depends on the Editor and on the of reviewers. The most of Editors and reviewers are doing their job very well. I have expressed my opinion in a pretty long post. You cited only one sentence, which does not fully describe my opinion. In my area, chemistry, it's rather simple to distinguish whether the review is really professional.

My new paper on the topic is now freely available online!

Article Nonfinancial conflict of interest in peer-review: Some notes...

Another paper on the same topic!

Preprint Editors publishing in their own journals – a systematic revi...