OpenPhysio aims to provide prompt reviews that help authors ensure that published papers are rigorous and as good as they can be. All submissions are reviewed by someone on the Editorial Board, who check the submission for scope, fit, and quality before publishing the article. Submitted papers are then passed to an Associate Editor to begin the review process. Two reviewers are then invited to review the article.
Our review process is:
- Open: review reports are public and published alongside the final article
- Transparent: reviewers and authors are not anonymous.
- Collaborative: reviewers and authors are able to comment on each other’s work and we encourage an open dialogue between them.
- Ongoing: reviewers comment on the document prior to acceptance, and anyone can comment afterwards.
Reviewers work with authors and editors to improve the article by commenting on the public work. The aim of our peer review is to focus on the quality of the article and not its perceived importance. We trust that the relative importance of research is better determined by the community over an extended period, rather than by two anonymous reviewers at a single point in time. This means that an article is unlikely to be rejected based on the reviewers’ opinion of its “value”. However, rejection is still possible should the research include fatal flaws that cannot be addressed by the authors. Note that, while we encourage authors to engage constructively with the reviewers in improving the submission, the editorial team has the final say in deciding whether or not to accept the article.
Once the article is accepted, we encourage an ongoing, post-publication peer review process where readers can further engage with authors around the article. This process does not affect the “Accepted” status of the article but does allow for readers to discuss the research directly with the authors. The review process itself takes approximately 4 – 6 weeks to complete but can change depending on a variety of factors beyond our control at the journal.
This approach to peer review means that authors, reviewers and editors are accountable for the decisions they make, bias is reduced, novice reviewers can learn from the transparent process, and reviewers are acknowledged for their work. We believe that this approach creates an environment in which the ideas in scholarly work can be shared and discussed openly.