Who chooses open peer review and is it an indicator of article quality? An observational study of PLOS journals

Among the many benefits of open science practices are transparent access to data, accelerated research progress, enhanced collaboration, and increased public trust in science (Munafò et al., 2017). One such practice is open peer review, in which peer-review reports are published alongside articles, increasing the transparency of the peer review process and fostering open debate by allowing readers to examine how conclusions were reached and identify potential limitations.

In a new preprint published on MetaArXiv (Barnett and Spick, 2026), Adrian Barnett and Matt Spick examined 116,359 articles published in PLOS journals, where authors can choose to make peer-review reports publicly available when their papers are accepted for publication. Barnett and Spick found that about 40% of the analysed articles opted for open reviews. They also found substantial variation across countries: authors from France, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, and Ethiopia were more likely to choose open peer review, whereas those from Saudi Arabia, South Korea, Pakistan, Poland, and China were more likely to opt out.

Funder policies also appeared to influence publishing practices, with studies funded by the European Research Council (ERC) more likely to include open peer-review reports. Other variables positively associated with open review included the use of ORCID and Gmail addresses rather than institutional email domains (e.g., .edu). Both may reflect a greater willingness among authors to engage with open science practices and to remain contactable even after leaving their institutions.

Crucially, Barnett and Spick found that articles with open peer reviews were substantially less likely to be retracted and tended to accumulate more citations than those with closed reviews. This association does not appear to result from authors selectively making favourable reviews public; rather, it may reflect a tendency for authors who are more confident in the quality of their work to opt for open peer review.

Open peer review undoubtedly promotes a healthier scientific culture by increasing transparency and reproducibility (Wolfram et al., 2020). However, after an initial increase following the introduction of the policy, opt-in rates have plateaued in recent years. The authors of this preprint suggest that making the process easier – for example, by allowing authors to opt in with just a few simple clicks – could help increase uptake – a point worth considering for journals looking to promote open science. Furthermore, cultural norms, including encouragement from institutes and funding agencies, can strongly influence publishing behaviours.

Why I chose to highlight this preprint:

Openness lies at the heart of science: we perform experiments with the intention of sharing the knowledge we generate with the world, following peer review. It therefore makes sense for the peer review process itself to be open, as an integral part of this chain of knowledge exchange. The systematic analysis of open peer review displayed in this preprinted study is much needed and highlights the interesting connection between openness in the review process and the quality of the science.

Questions for the authors

1. Do you intend to expand your study to other open peer review practices e.g., open participation/crowd-based reviews?
2. I wonder if the career stage of the last/corresponding author affects tendency for open review. One might think negative comments will have a bad influence on their career.

References

Barnett, A. and Spick, M. (2026). Who chooses open peer review and is it an indicator of article quality? An observational study of PLOS journals. MetaArXiv 

Munafò, M. R., Nosek, B. A., Bishop, D. V. M., Button, K. S., Chambers, C. D., Percie du Sert, N., Simonsohn, U., Wagenmakers, E.-J., Ware, J. J. and Ioannidis, J. P. A. (2017). A manifesto for reproducible science. Nat Hum Behav 1, 0021.

Wolfram, D., Wang, P., Hembree, A. and Park, H. (2020). Open peer review: promoting transparency in open science. Scientometrics 125, 1033–1051.