---
title: "Open peer review"
chunk: 1/3
source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_peer_review"
category: "reference"
tags: "science, encyclopedia"
date_saved: "2026-05-05T03:49:36.870107+00:00"
instance: "kb-cron"
---

Open peer review is the various possible modifications of the traditional scholarly peer review process. The three most common modifications to which the term is applied are: 

Open identities: Authors and reviewers are aware of each other's identity.
Open reports: Review reports are published alongside the relevant article (rather than being kept confidential).
Open participation: The wider community (and not just invited reviewers) are able to contribute to the review process.
These modifications are supposed to address various perceived shortcomings of the traditional scholarly peer review process, in particular its lack of transparency, lack of incentives, wastefulness, bullying and harassment.

== Definitions ==

Open identities
Open peer review may be defined as "any scholarly review mechanism providing disclosure of author and referee identities to one another at any point during the peer review or publication process". Then reviewer's identities may or may not be disclosed to the public. This is in contrast to the traditional peer review process where reviewers remain anonymous to anyone but the journal's editors. Authors' names are disclosed during the process in a single-blind organisation of reviews. In the double-blind process, authors' names and reviewers' names all remain anonymous except to the editor.

Open reports
Open peer review may be defined as making the reviewers' reports public, instead of disclosing them to the article's authors only. This may include publishing the rest of the peer review history, i.e. the authors' replies and editors' recommendations. Most often, this concerns only articles that are accepted for publication, and not those that are rejected.

Open participation
Open peer review may be defined as allowing self-selected reviewers to comment on an article, rather than (or in addition to) having reviewers who are selected by the editors. This assumes that the text of the article is openly accessible. The self-selected reviewers may or may not be screened for their basic credentials, and they may contribute either short comments or full reviews.