#AcademicPublishing #transparentresearch
A suggestion on "transparent review".
I got a ms to review from a journal that does "transparent review", which I don't generally support (for reasons made clear below). After thinking about it, I think we can find a good compromise between the people who want transparent review and the people who want to be able to communicate things that are embarrassing or are difficult or inappropriate to share publicly.
What if peer review contained three things? (1) peer review comments that are OK for authors to share, (2) peer review comments that are private to authors, and (3) peer review comments that are private to editors?
(1 [public]) would contain a discussion of the issues, controls, and concerns the public needed to know in appreciating the paper
(2 [private to authors]) could contain things that the authors would find embarrassing if included (like stupid mistakes), as well as things that didn't change the meaning of the paper, but made it hard to read (like bad figure design or egregious abbreviations). (2) could also contain suggestions for how to redo the whole analysis project if that were necessary (as happened in a recent review I did).
(3 [private to editors]) would be reserved for expressing depth of concern (is it minor or major) and expressions of concern about fraud or other such problems.
If someone misused these three components, the editors could ask them to move them around to fit the structure.
Just a modest proposal, since a lot of journals are now just adding the reviews to the end of the paper, which many people (like me!) don't support.
@adredish I am a big fan of open review. I don't mind having my name associated with my comments and actually I'd rather someone not guess wrongly that I wrote something I didn't.
Most journals I review from have a box for comments to editors only and I guess your example makes sense. I think it only happened to me once to use it.
I don't see a case for comments to authors only. I've suggested redoing the analysis on papers several times and I think that should be openly visible there is no shame in that, it shows the authors are happy to improve their own work. Same for silly mistakes... why would I be embarrassed if I made a silly mistake? That's the whole purpose of reviewing papers, correcting mistakes.
