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In this blog, we explore this year’s Peer Review Week theme of ‘Research Integrity: Creating and supporting trust in research’, and how our transparent peer review process contributes to this.

What is open peer review?

HRB Open Research operates an open and transparent post-publication peer review process. As a result, articles are published before peer review takes place, and peer review reports are published alongside articles. Usually, an article receives two or three peer review reports, and the reviewers choose an approval status, which determines whether the article has ‘passed peer review.’

What’s different about our approach to peer review?

Traditional closed peer review typically follows a single or double-blinded process. It also allows journal editors and reviewers to act as knowledge curators, deciding what research is published. Our model differs by publishing the reviewers’ names, affiliations, and conflicts of interest alongside the article, and conducting peer review after publication. Validations and critiques of the research are also openly and publicly available.

“Open peer review is an excellent way of sharing insight with the research community and beyond. Providing such transparency can create trust in the publishing process and limit the “cherry-picking” of what research gets published.”

Marina Zaki, National University of Ireland, Galway

A collaborative approach

Peer review in all its form plays an important role in ensuring the integrity of the scholarly record. The process depends to a large extent on trust and requires that everyone involved behaves responsibly and ethically. That’s why at HRB Open Research, we empower authors by allowing them to suggest reviewers.

Additionally, our transparent approach to peer review promotes a constructive peer-review process and encourages readers to contribute to the discussion between the authors and reviewers. Readers can comment to give their own opinion on the article and/or the peer-review reports themselves. Furthermore, all readers can track the progress of the article and its peer review status in real time.

“Open peer review allows authors the opportunity to get opinions from experts in the field and have an open and clear dialogue that benefits the research. Giving readers access to the reviewer comments allows the readers to be aware of comments or critiques of the paper and the limitations of the study.” Lydia King, National University of Ireland, Galway

Ethical guidance for reviewers

Peer reviewers play a central and critical part in the peer review process but may be unfamiliar with their ethical obligations. To help ensure that peer review at HRB Open Research is constructive and beneficial to authors, readers and other reviewers, we ask reviewers to:                                      

1. Read the article fully
2. Be thorough 
3. Be specific 
4. Be constructive
5. Avoid derogatory comments or tone

We also recommend reviewers familiarize themselves with The Committee on Publication Ethics’ (COPE) ethical guidelines for peer reviewers.

Checking reviewer suitability

To safeguard the quality and integrity of reviews, the HRB Open Research editorial team will check peer review suggestions to ensure researchers are:

• Qualified
• Experts in the relevant field
• Have no conflicts of interest

These rigorous checks ensure every researcher we invite to peer review can provide a current, in-depth, and knowledgeable review. Of course, these checks can be looked at on a case-by-case basis. Additionally, they serve to uphold research integrity by minimizing the potential for peer reviewer bias.

Reducing the possibility of bias

Conflicts of interest can occur in the scientific world, whether this is to do with funding or an overlap in a consortium group. Due to this, we have open discussions with authors and reviewers about whether they can produce an unbiased review. We also declare all competing interests alongside reports. This allows readers and future researchers to have all the information regarding the peer review process readily accessible to them. 

Moreover, our approach to the peer review process allows authors and reviewers to view one another’s competing interests’ statements helping to reduce potential bias and increase trust in the peer review process. We consider a wide range of things to be potential competing interests, and a complete list can be found here.

Publishing peer review reports

‘Patients want to know what is being studied and what’s being found. This research is usually published in journals that require a subscription, which significantly hinders the accessibility of research.’ Robert Joyce, Patient Researcher

A further benefit of our peer review process is the ability to read peer review reports for all research published on HRB Open Research. Compared to the traditional peer review model, this is rare and offers insights often not afforded to readers of scientific research. This is particularly useful for building public trust in healthcare research where the public, as critical stakeholders and service users, are invested in and directly affected by discoveries and research outcomes. By enabling access to research and peer review reports, readers learn from the insights and limitations drawn from the reports and can better contextualize the research. This, in turn, could also lead to increasing its potential impact.  

“It is very important that research is open access where possible, as often times the people who might benefit from the findings do not have access to research behind pay walls, which undermines the potential value of the research.” Eva Cooney, National University of Ireland, Galway

Like traditional peer review models, open peer review is crucial to research communication. Scholars, scientists, and the public rely on peer review to uphold research integrity and ensure that published research is valid and trustworthy. That’s why at HRB Open Research, our innovative peer review process is fully transparent. We believe this leads to increased accountability and quality, making it easier to know if research can be trusted.

Interested in reviewing for HRB Open Research? Read more about our peer review process or view our reviewer guidelines.  

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