Like most Brazilian journals, RAP makes published articles freely and openly available to its readers and other interested audiences. This social contribution is made possible by uninterrupted funding from Fundação Getulio Vargas (FGV EBAPE) and the journal’s relationship with SciELO.
Seeking to respond to the Open Science guidelines promoted by SciELO, we announce to our readers and contributors that RAP will adopt Open Peer Review and Open Reports. The Open Peer Review may include one or some of the transparent publishing practices such as a) publishing the reviews; b) the article will be open for community comments; c) discussions will be open between authors, editors, and reviewers; d) review will be open before publication via preprints; e) share the identity of reviewers, among other measures.
RAP will adopt two of these measures. The Open Peer Review consists of providing the published article and (with their consent) the name of the reviewers and their institutions. The Open Report means publishing the article and its reviews. If the reviewers do not authorize the publication of their names, the reviews will be published anonymously.
Both measures seek to improve transparency in scientific publications. However, these practices also offer risks, which we are aware of. Among the expected benefits, stand out:
- An increased understanding of the publishing process
Especially the publication of reviews will help readers to contextualize and increase their understanding of the publishing process. Readers can understand the types of questions that reviewers raise and the limits of the study. Publishing the reviews reinforces the article’s validity, exposing the journal’s rigorous process.
- Highlights the reviewers’ contribution
When publishing the reviews and the reviewers’ names, we highlight the value of the reviewing process and its crucial role in scientific communication.
- Educational role
The reviews are examples for future researchers interested in peer review processes.
- Improvement to reviews quality
The literature has no consensus regarding the relationship between transparently publishing reviews and improving them. Some studies indicate that published reviews slightly improve or maintain the same quality as anonymous and unpublished ones. Other studies note that published reviews lead to improvements such as more constructive feedback and the size of the review.
Among the risks mentioned earlier, we highlight those related to revealing the reviewers’ names. Fears of institutional or personal retaliation, unavailability of reviewers, concern over writing, or punctuation errors are all relevant and current reviewer fears. Therefore, we chose not to make this decision mandatory but allow reviewers to authorize the disclosure of their names and institutions.
Overall, we hope that this measure, which seeks to improve transparency in the scientific communication process, will have positive benefits, particularly of an educational nature, for our audiences. We will move forward in adopting these measures and collectively learn from the new review processes.
REFERÊNCIAS
- PLOS. (2022). Open Peer Review Recuperado de https://plos.org/resource/open-peer-review/
» https://plos.org/resource/open-peer-review/ - SciELO in Perspective. (2022). Open Peer Review Recuperado de https://blog.scielo.org/en/tag/open-peer-review
» https://blog.scielo.org/en/tag/open-peer-review
Publication Dates
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Publication in this collection
09 Sept 2022 -
Date of issue
Jul-Aug 2022
