Shifting the culture of peer review with Reviewer Zero | FORRT - Framework for Open and Reproducible Research Training

"As efforts to improve scientific practice and policy toward more openness and transparency take shape, it is essential to consider who is designing these systems and what perspectives they reflect. To build systems that are truly open and accessible for a global psychological science, we must take proactive steps to include different perspectives, identities, and voices in creating and changing systems. Here, we walk through examples of two kinds of openness that can have implications for minoritized or underserved groups. The essential questions are who is being asked to be “open,” and at what cost?

One innovation in peer review is open peer review, which includes disclosure of author and reviewer identities and reviews. Open peer review can include different levels of disclosure: For example, greater transparency without identification can occur if reviews are public but reviewers are not identified. Although identified peer review can have some advantages in that reviewers are clearly accountable to what they write in a review, this system may not be equitably open to all. Individuals who occupy less powerful positions, whether due to their career stage or underrepresented group identities, may experience more backlash or more negative consequences in offering critique – or their perspectives may simply be dismissed in favor of reviews from people who hold more power or come from majority groups. Transparent peer review, where reviews are public but reviewer identities are not, might offer greater security to reviewers. From an author perspective, though, individuals who are contending with identity threat may be unwilling (for good reason) to have critiques of their work openly aired (for further discussion, Aly et al., 2023). The very ability to engage in different aspects of open peer review can vary across individuals with different levels of power in a system...."