Open peer review is one of the elements of open science. It is based on a peer-to-peer review of a scientific publication. The identity of both reviewers and authors is public, and the content of the prepared review is publicly available. Thanks to this solution, the review is also subject to social control, which allows for transparency of the entire reviewing process. All aspects of the research cycle become more transparent.
There are several reasons why this review is conducted in this way:
- transparency (disclosure of the identity of all process members)
- speed (going from individual reviewers to social review speeds up the whole process)
- credibility (many reviewers allow for a better opportunity to identify methodological errors or inconsistencies; initiatives such as For better science and Pubpeer support open discussion and constructive criticism of scientific articles)
- consistency (open review reduces the risk of bias)
- motivation (assigning a DOI to published review reports causes them to become cited works themselves)
- context (opening the reviewers 'questions together with the authors' answers provides a valuable context on the applied research methodologies and processes)
Those authors who use preprint servers to obtain feedback on their work can also benefit from making their work more visible to potential publishers. In some cases, authors who made early results available through preprint servers were contacted directly by journals interested in publishing their work.
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