Transparent review at the European Journal of Neuroscience: experiences one year on

Abstract

In the interest of transparency in scientific publishing, at the Society for Neuroscience meeting in San Diego on 15 November 2016, the editorial board decided to institute a transparent peer-review system for the European Journal of Neuroscience (EJN). For new submissions from that date onwards, all peer-review documents, including all editorial correspondence, are available as a supplementary document attached to the published paper. This decision was a long time in gestation and the subject of much discussion and argument, but the editorial board was committed to open review and transparency in science. In addition to the openness, we were also committed to giving credit where credit is due. We had already introduced a system to reveal the names of the Section Editors dealing with our papers, but as reviewers do an enormous amount of work for the journal and the scientific community, we considered it important that they are recognised for it (see Foxe & Bolam, 2017). Despite our fears, apprehension and nervousness, we ‘bit the bullet’ and ‘pressed the button’ in November last year. At the time of writing, we are approaching the 1-year anniversary of this new transparent system, so what are our experiences, have any of our initial qualms been born out, and have our hopes been realised? All in all, we consider that we have successfully and smoothly moved into a transparent review process. We consider that the review documents give important insights into the development of a paper and have received only encouragement and support for our transition. We urge other journals to join the ever-increasing number of journals truly committed to transparency in science. The essence of this editorial was originally published as a blog associated with ‘peer-review week’ (https://hub.wiley.com/community/exchanges/discover/blog/2017/09/13/transparent-review-at-theeuropean-journal-of-neuroscience-experiences-one-year-on?elq_mid=9422&elq_cid=781791).

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