Open Peer Review

Open peer review is not one fixed procedure but a bundle of independent design choices about how much of the peer review process a journal or platform discloses to readers, and to the participants themselves. A review counts as “open” to the extent that reviewer identities, review reports, decision letters, or post-publication comment threads are made visible beyond the closed editor-reviewer-author loop that defines traditional anonymized review.

What makes a review “open”

ANSI/NISO Z39.106-2023, “Standard Terminology for Peer Review” (published July 2023, developed from an STM Association working-group taxonomy), describes any peer review model along four independent dimensions rather than as a single label: identity transparency (who knows whose identity), who the reviewer interacts with, what review information gets published, and whether post-publication commenting is enabled. Under this framework, “open peer review” is not a single point on the spectrum but the set of implementations where at least one of the last two dimensions – published review information, or open commenting – is switched on for readers, not just for the editor.

In practice, most journals and platforms that describe themselves as running “open peer review” combine two or more of the following components:

• Open identities – reviewer names (and sometimes author names) are disclosed to each other, and often to readers, rather than withheld as in single-anonymized or double-anonymized review.
• Open reports – the reviewers’ written comments, and often the editor’s decision letter and the authors’ response, are published alongside the accepted article rather than staying in the confidential editorial file.
• Open participation – the wider research community, not just invited reviewers, can comment on a manuscript before or after publication.
• Open pre-review manuscripts – the version under review is a public preprint, so review happens in view of anyone who finds the preprint rather than behind a submission-system login.

A journal can implement any subset of these. A title that discloses reviewer names to authors internally but never publishes a report or opens a comment thread to readers is not practicing open peer review under this definition – see the counter-examples below.

Open peer review in practice: real examples

Implementations vary considerably by publisher, which is part of why the label alone is not enough to know what a given journal actually does:

• BMJ has run signed, open peer review across BMJ and BMJ family journals for more than two decades – reviewers identify themselves in their report. BMJ Open goes further and is fully transparent: when a paper is accepted, the reviewer comments and the authors’ responses are published alongside the article, with reviewer names attached unless a reviewer specifically requests anonymity.
• MDPI journals offer open peer review as an author- and reviewer-level option rather than a mandate: authors can choose to publish review reports and author responses with the paper, and reviewers can choose to sign their own report (open identity) or remain anonymous, which is the MDPI default. Reported uptake has stayed in roughly the 10-30% range since 2018, with about 21% of authors opting in during 2024.
• eLife publishes the editorial decision letter and the authors’ response whenever the authors agree, alongside an “eLife Assessment” that summarizes the significance of the findings and the strength of the supporting evidence. eLife’s current model also builds on open pre-review manuscripts: papers are reviewed as public preprints under eLife’s Publish-Review-Curate approach rather than being reviewed pre-publication in the traditional sense.
• F1000Research runs one of the most fully open models in the field: articles are posted first, and both referee identity and the review reports are visible alongside the manuscript from the start of the review process, including while revisions are in progress.
• Conference-style open review platforms such as OpenReview, used by venues including ICLR and NeurIPS, publish the full review thread – reviewer comments, author rebuttals, and often reader comments – as a public record tied to the submission.

Nature Communications, PLOS, BMC, GigaScience, EMBO Press, and PeerJ are among other publishers that offer some form of open reports or open identities on at least part of their portfolio, usually as an author- or reviewer-level opt-in rather than a blanket requirement.

Open peer review vs. anonymized (“blind”) review

Openness and anonymization describe two different, independent choices a journal makes, not two ends of the same scale – a point covered in more depth on CASRAI’s single-blind vs double-blind vs open peer review comparison. Under single-anonymized review, the reviewer knows the author’s identity but not vice versa; under double-anonymized review, neither party knows the other, and this stays true through the editorial decision. Both of those models are defined by what stays hidden from the author and, in double-anonymized review, from the reviewer too. Open peer review is defined by the opposite question: what gets disclosed to readers once the process is over. A journal could, in principle, run a double-anonymized review process and then publish the (still-anonymized or subsequently de-anonymized) reports afterward – anonymization during review and openness after publication are separate axes, not the same one.

Why some journals adopt it, and common objections

Publishers that have adopted open reports or open identities generally frame it as a transparency and accountability measure: it lets readers see the substance of the review that shaped a paper, gives reviewers citable, creditable work product, and is intended to discourage discourteous or careless reviewing since the report is no longer purely private. The most commonly raised objection, discussed across the peer-review literature and reflected in why most open-identity programs remain opt-in rather than mandatory, is that disclosing reviewer identity can make reviewers – particularly early-career researchers reviewing more senior or more powerful authors – more reluctant to write a critical report, or more likely to soften one. This is one reason several publishers (MDPI, Nature Communications, and others) separate the two components: open reports can be adopted without also requiring open identities.

Frequently asked questions

What is an example of open peer review?

BMJ Open publishing a reviewer’s signed comments and the author’s response alongside the final article, and F1000Research displaying referee identity and review reports next to the manuscript throughout revision, are both concrete examples. So is an OpenReview-hosted conference submission where the full review thread is publicly readable.

Does MDPI use open peer review?

Yes, as an option rather than a default. MDPI authors can choose to have review reports and their response published with the article, and reviewers can choose whether to sign their own report; reviewers who don’t sign remain anonymous. Reported opt-in rates have run roughly 10-30% since 2018 (about 21% in 2024).

Which journals use open peer review?

BMJ and BMJ Open, eLife, F1000Research, MDPI journals, Nature Communications, PLOS journals, BMC journals, GigaScience, EMBO Press, and PeerJ are commonly cited examples, though the specific combination of open reports, open identities, and open commenting they implement differs by title – check an individual journal’s peer review policy page rather than assuming a uniform model.