Attitudes of the editors of Brazilian scholarly journals toward open peer review. A survey

Open review is one of the components of open science that scientific journals are incorporating in their editorial processes. In contrast to open access to literature and research data, open review still raises many doubts and concerns among the involved parties (editors, reviewers and authors). This article aims to analyze the perception of editors of Brazilian academic journals on open peer review. To achieve this, a questionnaire was sent to 3,208 editors, out of which 351 responded to the full set of 42 questions. The editors expressed satisfaction with the current model of scientific communication, the double-blind model, and disagreed with any type of identification of reviewers. However, they perceived an advantage in open review, as it allows for mutual interaction between authors and reviewers with the goal of improving the quality of content. As barriers, they pointed out conflicts of interest and rivalries that open review might generate and the difficulty in finding reviewers willing to accept this review model. The overall conclusion points to a conservative profile among editors regarding the introduction of open peer review practices.