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Open Peer Review at JMIR Publications

Editorial Director
Updated

Open peer review is an umbrella term that describes practices designed to increase transparency, participation, and accountability in scholarly peer review. Across the academic publishing ecosystem, open peer review can involve:

  1. Open identities – authors and reviewers know each other’s names.
  2. Open reports – peer-review reports are published alongside articles.
  3. Open participation – the wider research community can provide reviews or comments.
  4. Open pre-review manuscripts – manuscripts are publicly available as preprints.
  5. Open interaction – direct discussion between authors and reviewers.
  6. Portable or transferable reviews – reviews can follow a manuscript to other journals.

JMIR’s approach emphasizes open identities, open participation, and preprint-enabled transparency, while maintaining traditional editorial oversight in peer review.

Open Identities (Transparent Reviewer Identities)

Open identities refers to whether authors and reviewers know each other’s names. At JMIR Publications, all journals have single-anonymized peer review by default. This means:

  • Reviewers know the names of the authors during review, but authors do not know the names of the reviewers. 
  • If a manuscript is accepted, reviewer names are published alongside the article.
  • If a manuscript is rejected, reviewer names remain confidential.

This model promotes accountability, constructive feedback, and professional recognition (see What does the peer review process at JMIR journals look like? to learn more about the peer review process at JMIR Publications).

Open Participation Peer Review 

JMIR offers open participation peer review to the wider research community, allowing qualified researchers outside the editor-invited pool the opportunity to participate in peer review. 

Authors may opt in during submission to enable open participation, meaning that:

  • The manuscript title and abstract are visible to interested users who can volunteer to review the submission.
  • Volunteers deemed suitable are then formally invited as a peer reviewer.
  • The Editorial Office retains responsibility for assigning additional invited reviewers and for final decisions.

For more information, see Open Participation Peer Review at JMIR Publications.

Preprints and public visibility

  • Authors opting into open participation peer review (during journal submission) can also post their full manuscript as a JMIR Preprint.
  • Preprints receive a DOI, are citable immediately, and remain linked to the final published article if accepted for publication in a JMIR Publications journal (see JMIR Preprints).
  • Preprints enable rapid dissemination, early feedback, and compliance with funder policies that encourage or require sharing interim research outputs.

 

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