Research domains
Open peer-review has been increasingly used by scientific journals. Several journals now provide reviewers’ identities and/or publish their full review. While this approach is increasingly common in scholarly publishing, it is not yet common practice in research funding application nor in hiring, tenure and promotion assessments.
Context and considerations
Open peer-review can refer to different models that aim to bring greated transparency to the review process. In some cases, the identity of reviewers is disclosed to applicants and/or published publicly. In other cases, the review reports are completely open, shared with applicants or made open publicly, this can be done with or without the reviewers’ identities being disclosed.
Several opinions and studies have been made on the impacts that such openness may have on the peer-review process. In some cases, it is believed that openness prevents “reviewers ‘hiding behind’ anonymity when criticizing the work of others”, but other works suggest that “reviewers may shy away from being critical in this context” (Gutrie, 2019. Gutrie’s report Innovating in the Research Funding Process: Peer Review Alternatives and Adaptations provides a useful summary of elements to be considered in open peer-review, including a list of pros and cons.
UK Research and Innovation (UKRI)’s Review of Peer Review suggests that open peer-reviews “are expected to lead to increased accountability, challenging unjust reviews, giving applicants more voice in the process and increasing overall review quality.” They also conclude that since an open peer-review system may enable applicants to clarify misunderstandings and some of the application’s content, they may help reduce biases where English (or the local language) is not the applicant’s first language.
Challenges and mitigations
Challenge: One challenge from open peer-review is that it can reduce the honesty of reviewers who have concerns - make reviewers avoid raising issues, especially if the application is from someone renowned in their expertise.
Mitigation: A review process that contains more detailed questions may circumvent this problem, encouraging reviewers to be as honest as possible on more specific and direct questions, thereby transposing the personal responsibility to the review process.
Evaluating success
Relevant resources and literature
Templates from funders and institutions
Case examples and literature
The Dutch Research Council (NWO) allows applicants to see reviewer responses and offer a response as part of the application process. In their own words, “As soon as NWO has received the referee reports, we will forward them to you. You will subsequently be given several business days to respond in writing (the ‘rebuttal’). You can answer referees’ questions and address any criticisms in your rebuttal.”.
UKRI also allows ten working days for applicants to write a rebuttal (see here).
Examples of fully open Peer Review exist among scientific journals, for instance eLife or F1000 Research.
Other resources
Ross-Hellauer, T. (2017). What is open peer-review? A systematic review. F1000Research, 6:588. https://doi.org/10.12688/f1000research.11369.2
Liu, Y., Li, S. & Rousseau, R. (2026). Peer review for funding decisions. Journal of Data and Information Science, 11(1). https://doi.org/10.2478/jdis-2025-0050
Gutrie, S. (2019). ‘Innovating in the Research Funding Process: Peer Review Alternatives and Adaptations’
UKRI (2023). Review of peer-review. https://www.ukri.org/publications/review-of-peer-review/review-of-peer-review-june-2023/