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As an important part of the open science movement and the transformation of academic publishing models, open peer review (OPR) has been implemented in journals such as Nature, Nature Communications, and Science Advances. However, the effectiveness of open peer review has been controversial in the academic community, which may not only improve the transparency of the review process, but also lead to mediocre review opinions.
Tripartite relationship between reviewers, authors, and editors (this image is generated by ChatGPT-4)
To this end, the research team of the Science and Technology Communication Research Center of Soochow University selected about 75,000 articles from Nature Communications and PLoS One, which are representative journals in open peer review, aiming to compare the performance of open and non-open peer review articles in the two dimensions of academic citations (Citations) and social impact (Altmetrics).
The study found that the open peer review of the two journals had an effect on the social impact of the papers, both in terms of overall and individual disciplinary performance, but it may not have a substantial effect on the citation rate of the papers. The research results were published online in the JOI journal in the field of information science on April 28, with Associate Professor Cheng Xi of the Science and Technology Communication Research Center of Soochow University as the first author and Professor Wang Guoyan as the corresponding author.
Journal of Informetrics (JOI, 2022 Impact Factor 3.7, average number of citations in the past 3 years 6.9) was founded in 2007, the journal is known for publishing rigorous and high-quality information metrics and scientometrics research, mainly focusing on bibliography, scienometrics, network metrics and other topics. In 2023, JOI journals will be ranked in the Chinese Academy of Sciences Journal Partition Table in Management Zone 2, Computer and Interdisciplinary Applications Zone 2, and Library Information and Archives Management Zone 2.
The research team collected citation rate and social impact data from 32,350 Nature Communications journals and 43,501 PLoS One journal article type articles, and coded them according to the "Open Review Report" (OR) and "Open Reviewer Information" (OI) dimensions under open peer review. After eliminating the effect of publication time on the citation rate and social impact of papers, the study found that in Nature Communications journals, compared with articles with open review reports, the citation rates of articles with open review reports were higher and significantly different. The results are also applicable to the comparison of open and non-open reviewer information dimensions.
Scope of data collection and coding process for the study
However, in terms of the data performance of social impact, the comparison results of the two dimensions are diametrically opposed, and Nature Communications journal articles with open review reports and open reviewer information show obvious advantages, and their values are higher than those without open review reports and reviewer information, and there are significant differences. The data trend in PLoS One is also similar to that in Nature Communications, except that articles with open reviewer information have higher citation rates than articles without open reviewer information, but the difference is not significant.
The study also looked at differences in performance between different disciplines. In both Nature Communications and PLoS One, the citation rates of articles with non-open review reports and non-open reviewer information were higher than those with open review reports and open reviewer information for each subject classification in most cases. At the same time, the social impact data of the two journals showed an opposite trend to the citation rate, that is, the social impact data with open review reports and open reviewer information articles were more advantageous. However, there were a few exceptions, and in some disciplines in the two journals, the citation rate of articles with open review reports was higher than that of articles without open review reports, and these differences were not significant. As a result, the data performance across disciplines further reinforces the conclusion of the overall trend.
Some of the findings
Based on the above results, this study also analyzes the characteristics of open peer review, disciplinary culture, citation rate, and the differences in the perspective of social influence. Considering that there are many factors affecting the citation rate and social influence of papers, this study does not study the causal relationship between open peer review and citation rate and social influence, but the results of this study still indicate some possible trend changes. First, different expressions of citation rate and social influence may reflect different attitudes towards open peer review among different target audiences (researchers and mass media). It is worth in-depth study on how publishers should view and dispose of the review report, which is a valuable academic material, and whether it is necessary to carry out focus scholarship dissemination. Second, there is room for improvement in the transparency of scientific publications. The study provides some evidence support for the impact performance data of different disciplines and specific academic needs, and how to steadily promote the open peer review process.
Pictured is PLoS Publishing Group's open peer review program for authors (from PLoS's official website)
The picture shows the impact of open peer review on authors (from the official website of the European Commission)
Note: Professor Tang Li from the School of International Relations and Public Affairs at Fudan University supervised and co-designed this study, with the participation of Wang Haoran, an undergraduate student, and Jiang Weiyan, a graduate student from the School of Media and Communication at Soochow University.
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