---
title: "Scholarly peer review"
chunk: 6/12
source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scholarly_peer_review"
category: "reference"
tags: "science, encyclopedia"
date_saved: "2026-05-05T03:44:38.682666+00:00"
instance: "kb-cron"
---

=== Transparent peer review ===
In transparent peer review the documents relating to the publication of the paper are published alongside the paper. This includes the initial report made by the peer reviewer, the authors' response to it, and the acceptance letter by the editor. The names of the reviewers may still be kept anonymous even in transparent peer review.

=== Pre- and post-publication peer review ===
The process of peer review is not restricted to the publication process managed by academic journals. In particular, some forms of peer review can occur before an article is submitted to a journal and/or after it is published by the journal.

==== Pre-publication peer review ====
Manuscripts are typically reviewed by colleagues before submission, and if the manuscript is uploaded to preprint servers, such as ArXiv, BioRxiv or SSRN, researchers can read and comment on the manuscript. The practice to upload to preprint servers, and the activity of discussion heavily depend on the field, and it allows an open pre-publication peer review. The advantage of this method is speed and transparency of the review process. Anyone can give feedback, typically in form of comments, and typically not anonymously. These comments are also public, and can be responded to, therefore author-reviewer communication is not restricted to the typical 2–4 rounds of exchanges in traditional publishing. The authors can incorporate comments from a wide range of people instead of feedback from the typically 3–4 reviewers. The disadvantage is that a far larger number of papers are presented to the community without any guarantee on quality.

==== Post-publication peer review ====
After a manuscript is published, the process of peer review continues as publications are read, known as post-publication peer review. Readers will often send letters to the editor of a journal, or correspond with the editor via an on-line journal club. In this way, all "peers" may offer review and critique of published literature. The introduction of the "epub ahead of print" practice in many journals has made possible the simultaneous publication of unsolicited letters to the editor together with the original paper in the print issue.
A variation on this theme is open peer commentary, in which commentaries from specialists are solicited on published articles and the authors are invited to respond. Journals using this process solicit and publish non-anonymous commentaries on the "target paper" together with the paper, and with original authors' reply as a matter of course. Open peer commentary was first implemented by the anthropologist Sol Tax, who founded the journal Current Anthropology in 1957. The journal Behavioral and Brain Sciences, published by Cambridge University Press, was founded by Stevan Harnad in 1978 and modeled on Current Anthropology's open peer commentary feature. Psycoloquy (1990–2002) was based on the same feature, but this time implemented online. Since 2016 open peer commentary is also provided by the journal Animal Sentience.
In addition to journals hosting their own articles' reviews, there are also external, independent websites dedicated to post-publication peer-review, such as PubPeer which allows anonymous commenting of published literature and pushes authors to answer these comments. It has been suggested that post-publication reviews from these sites should be editorially considered as well. The megajournals F1000Research and ScienceOpen publish openly both the identity of the reviewers and the reviewer's report alongside the article.
Some journals use post-publication peer review as formal review method, instead of pre-publication review. This was first introduced in 2001, by Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics (ACP). More recently F1000Research, Qeios, and ScienceOpen  were launched as megajournals with post-publication review as formal review method. At ACP, F1000Research, and Qeios peer reviewers are formally invited, much like at pre-publication review journals. Articles that pass peer review at those three journals are included in external scholarly databases.

==== Social media and informal peer review ====
Recent research has called attention to the use of social media technologies and science blogs as a means of informal, post-publication peer review, as in the case of the #arseniclife (or GFAJ-1) controversy. In December 2010, an article published in Scienceexpress (the ahead-of-print version of Science) generated both excitement and skepticism, as its authors – led by NASA astrobiologist Felisa Wolfe-Simon – claimed to have discovered and cultured a certain bacteria that could replace phosphorus with arsenic in its physiological building blocks. At the time of the article's publication, NASA issued press statements suggesting that the finding would impact the search for extraterrestrial life, sparking excitement on Twitter under the hashtag #arseniclife, as well as criticism from fellow experts who voiced skepticism via their personal blogs. Ultimately, the controversy surrounding the article attracted media attention, and one of the most vocal scientific critics – Rosemary Redfield – formally published in July 2012 regarding her and her colleagues' unsuccessful attempt to replicate the NASA scientists' original findings.
Researchers following the impact of the #arseniclife case on social media discussions and peer review processes concluded the following:

Our results indicate that interactive online communication technologies can enable members in the broader scientific community to perform the role of journal reviewers to legitimize scientific information after it has advanced through formal review channels. In addition, a variety of audiences can attend to scientific controversies through these technologies and observe an informal process of post-publication peer review. (p 946)

=== Result-blind peer review ===

Studies which report a positive or statistically significant result are far more likely to be published than ones which do not. A counter-measure to this positivity bias is to hide or make unavailable the results in the paper, making journal acceptance more like scientific grant agencies reviewing research proposals. Versions include: