What is open peer review, as operated by the medical journals in the BMC series?
“Open peer review” means that, firstly, the reviewers’ names are included on the peer review reports, and secondly that, if the manuscript is published, the reports are made available online along with the final version of the manuscript. The published article will provide a link to its ‘pre-publication history’, which lists all the versions of the manuscript, all the signed reviews, and all responses to the reviewers since the submission of the manuscript until its publication. Here is an example of a medical article with a pre-publication history.
