Advantages and disadvantages of open peer review: consensus and dissensus the literature

Abstract

Objective: the opening of the peer review process is an emerging issue of the open science movement and usually divides opinions in the scientific community, especially among its direct actors such as editors, authors, reviewers. This research aims to identify and analyze the advantages and disadvantages of open peer review presented in studies published in Portuguese on the subject. Method: this is an exploratory and descriptive bibliographic study, with a qualitative approach. The research corpus consists of articles published in journals or papers presented at academic events, in Portuguese, that address the open peer review system. Initially 360 papers were recovered, but only eleven met the purpose of the present study, which were analyzed. Results: we found four categories (Transparency, Quality, Recognition and Ethics) and 45 considerations between advantages and disadvantages. The number of advantages (36) of open peer review is greater than of disadvantages (9). The ‘Quality’ category is more representative of both the advantages (45%) and the disadvantages (75%). Considerations regarding the fact that OPR brings “More constructive, consistent and coherent comments” prevailed in the mentioned advantages, and others related to “Interference in the relationship between researchers and their academic projects” are more usual in the disadvantages indicated by the literature. Conclusions: eespite the challenges, peer review in the context of open science presents great possibilities to improve scientific production in order to make it more transparent, ethical and participatory and should be considered by the academic community.