Scholarly Communication Research Group, Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań, Poznań, Poland.
Centre for R&D Monitoring (ECOOM), Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Antwerp, Antwerp, Belgium.
PLoS One. 2019 Mar 25;14(3):e0214423. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0214423. eCollection 2019.
This article discusses the open-identity label, i.e., the practice of disclosing reviewers' names in published scholarly books, a common practice in Central and Eastern European countries. This study's objective is to verify whether the open-identity label is a type of peer-review label (like those used in Finland and Flanders, i.e., the Flemish part of Belgium), and as such, whether it can be used as a delineation criterion in various systems used to evaluate scholarly publications. We have conducted a two-phase sequential explanatory study. In the first phase, interviews with 20 of the 40 largest Polish publishers of scholarly books were conducted to investigate how Polish publishers control peer reviews and whether the open-identity label can be used to identify peer-reviewed books. In the other phase, two questionnaires were used to analyze perceptions of peer-review and open-identity labelling among authors (n = 600) and reviewers (n = 875) of books published by these 20 publishers. Integrated results allowed us to verify publishers' claims concerning their peer-review practices. Our findings reveal that publishers actually control peer reviews by providing assessment criteria to reviewers and sending reviews to authors. Publishers rarely ask for permission to disclose reviewers' names, but it is obvious to reviewers that this practice of disclosing names is part of peer reviewing. This study also shows that only the names of reviewers who accepted manuscripts for publication are disclosed. Thus, most importantly, our analysis shows that the open-identity label that Polish publishers use is a type of peer-review label like those used in Flanders and Finland, and as such, it can be used to identify peer-reviewed scholarly books.
本文讨论了公开身份标签，即在已发表的学术著作中披露审稿人姓名的做法，这在中东欧国家较为常见。本研究旨在验证公开身份标签是否属于同行评审标签（如芬兰和佛兰德斯使用的标签，即比利时的佛兰德斯部分），以及是否可以作为评估学术出版物的各种系统的划分标准。我们进行了一项两阶段的顺序解释性研究。在第一阶段，对 40 家波兰最大的学术书籍出版商中的 20 家进行了访谈，以调查波兰出版商如何控制同行评审，以及公开身份标签是否可以用于识别同行评审书籍。在另一阶段，使用两份问卷分析了这 20 家出版商出版的书籍的作者（n=600）和审稿人（n=875）对同行评审和公开身份标签的看法。综合结果使我们能够验证出版商对其同行评审做法的说法。我们的研究结果揭示了出版商通过向审稿人提供评估标准并将审稿意见发送给作者来实际控制同行评审的情况。出版商很少要求允许披露审稿人的姓名，但审稿人显然认为披露姓名的做法是同行评审的一部分。本研究还表明，仅披露接受出版的手稿的审稿人的姓名。因此，最重要的是，我们的分析表明，波兰出版商使用的公开身份标签是类似于佛兰德斯和芬兰使用的同行评审标签的一种标签，因此可以用于识别同行评审的学术书籍。
