Open, single-blind, double-blind: which peer review process do you prefer?

Abstract

BMC Pharmacology and Toxicology was created from the merger of two journals within the BMC series published by BioMed Central: BMC Pharmacology and BMC Clinical Pharmacology. BMC Pharmacology operated anonymous peer review whereas BMC Clinical Pharmacology operated a fully open peer review policy where the identity of the reviewers was known to the editors, authors and readers. The merged journal also adopted a fully open peer review policy. Two years on we discuss the views and experiences of our Editorial Board Members towards open peer review on this biomedical journal.

Figure 1

Piechart of the responses received from the Editorial Board to the question: ‘As a reviewer which peer review system do you prefer?’

Figure 2

Diagram of the preferences for a given peer review model classified by years of academic experience.

Figure 3

Piechart of the responses received from the Editorial Board to the question: ‘As an author, have you published in an open peer review journal?’

Figure 4

Piechart of the responses received from the Editorial Board to the question: ‘As a reader do you look at the pre-publication histories on BMC Pharmacology and Toxicology (or any of the open peer review journals in the BMC series)?’