What direction should China take with peer review?

Indeed, China’s academic publishing industry is thriving; it is offering its scholars thousands of journals to publish in. However, when benchmarked against journals from English-speaking countries, Chinese journals lag behind in quality. To increase their quality and promote an important measure of academic progress, Chinese journals must improve their peer review systems. With regards to the first aspect of a sound peer review system—the selection of high quality reviewers—Chinese journals currently select peer reviewers suitable to the journal’s scope. In terms of the second aspect—a system to safeguard the impartiality of expert reviews—single or double blind peer review is still popular. So far, blinded peer review has proven effective in preventing personal bias from creeping in. However, even blinded peer review has it’s limitations:

• Revealed identities: In niche subject areas with a close-knit academic community, reviewers can easily identify the author of the manuscript because they recognize the content in it. In this case, blind review is futile.
• No scope for authors to counter peer reviewer comments: Blinded peer review gives the reviewer the right to provide comments on another’s research work discreetly. However, some people feel this is like an incomplete court system in which the defendant is forced to accept the verdict without a chance to defend himself/herself. Our understanding of science is continually improved through discussion within the academic community. One-way judgments do not contribute well to academic progress.
• Unfairness: There is an unfortunate possibility that reviewers may give random and rushed comments due to time constraints, or that some reviewers may give biased comments to serve their own interests.

Open peer review offers solutions to these situations since the editor, reviewers, and authors are under public supervision. Each of them will make a conscious effort to protect their credibility: Editors will be more careful about selecting suitable reviewers; authors will better consider ethics, realizing that a watchful community of scholars online is capable of raising concerns on any questionable behavior before their paper is published; and reviewers will continue to provide fair reviews so that they become more trustworthy and authoritative in the field. Lastly, the open and transparent communication among the editor, authors, and reviewers stimulates scholarly activity and contribute to an overall academic progress through offering credit and criticisms directly.

The ultimate aim of peer review, whether open or anonymous, is publishing good science and deterring bad or unethical science from reaching publication. Chinese journals are currently following the blind peer review system; however, this system will need to undergo reformation to build a fairer and stronger foundation for science in China, and open peer review is perhaps one of the best moves in this direction.

Read the first part of this article The challenges of China's peer review system in the face of emerging Western trends.

[This article has been adapted from a translated version of 国外知名学术期刊改审稿机制：网络公开审稿.]