IMHO: why open science should adopt double anonymous peer review

Let's get opinionated...

Peer review is still the cornerstone of quality research. This has been repeated by so many during #PeerReviewWeek2023, it almost lost its meaning to me. I participated in this conversation wholeheartedly, as a freelancer with a variety of roles, from content review to integrity audits. 

I’m no longer in academia, but I did my stint there: it’s hard to imagine that many PhD students and postdocs get excited by performing their first peer review. It often results from an invitation trickle-down and, although it can be regarded as a learning opportunity, peer review is hard, time-consuming, unpaid, and often unrecognized work.

Open participation is often regarded by researchers as the fairer, more constructive and productive process, leading to improvement in the quality of the finished version of the works. This is the iterative version of having a preprint published in a stable server, with access to all versions of the work, and “comments on”. 

The effort peer review entails could then be balanced by a sense of community building, and this is lauded as its main merit. Even better, when reviewers’ identities and reports stemming from the revision of scientific manuscripts are publicly accessible, this could increase the public’s trust in the process, and accelerate acceptance of scientific innovations.

However, open identities are a double-edged sword. If an expert comments on my paper, am I more likely to change my interpretation of the data to keep myself in their good graces? If my competitor wishes to get personal, will harsh criticism disproportionately affect me? Well, yes. I am a woman in STEM after all. The toll on my mental health and career progression is significant. Funding opportunities are scarce, and the importance of a paper is much bigger for those in early career stages.

The first pillar of open science is open access —and next week, will be #OA2023. Liberating scientific publications from the constraints of paywalls did not spell the end for publishers, who have merely shifted the financial burden of maintaining an editorial service to authors, via the introduction of article processing charges. Given that most journals detain copyright of the works they publish, one might even be so bold as to claim that the work of assessing the soundness of the manuscript (peer review) would become the editors’ only financial concern. But no. In the traditional publishing model, researchers volunteer their time refereeing the work done by their peers.

While disclosing identities may work well in a meritocracy, scientific publishing is not there yet. If the COVID pandemic taught us anything, it's that open access to research publications enables faster progress. So why would double-anonymous peer review be preferred by many scholarly journals? Maybe access to peer reviewers is key. My ORCID is associated with the name Maria J C Machado, but PubMed and other sites show only MJ as my first name. When assuming I’m male, readers’ comments differ, they are less scathing, and more likely to consider me an expert. I can only conclude that open peer review leads to subtle but real discrimination of women.

Although open science is a wonderful idea, participation in the peer review process is still limited. Diversifying the pool of peer reviewers is one of the main problems journal editors face nowadays. Peer reviewers influence the decision to publish, and are thus in a position of power. Distributing this power and responsibility more equitably among scientists need not be at the expense of individual anonymity. The principles of IDEI (integrity, diversity, equity, and inclusion) need to weave their way into the editorial boards, publishing houses, and policy makers, if we are to continue with this model of knowledge dissemination.