What is Peer Review?
Peer review is the process by which research and scholarship is assessed, revised, and circulated. This can happen at many stages of the research process, in both formal and informal ways, but typically “peer review” refers to the feedback respected experts or “peers” give to prospective authors on matters of content, structure, argumentation, and bibliography. Peer review often happens through questionnaires or “reader report forms” that journals and presses send to invited readers. Peer review distinguishes scholarly publishing from other forms of publication.
Scholarly articles, proposals for scholarly books, and full manuscripts typically undergo some form of peer review. Editors seek out peer reviewers, solicit their feedback, and frame their reports for authors who then write a response detailing how they will address the concerns raised by these readers. Once all these materials are assembled (the full manuscripts of either journal articles or book projects, reports from peer reviewers, the author's response to reviewers, as well as author CVs), editors take the project to the press’s faculty or editorial board. The board reviews the materials and decides whether or not to approve projects for publication. Only after this process is complete is an article or book put into production--that is, readied for final publication.
According to the Association of University Presses, peer review “provides feedback that is both stringent and fair, enables an author to strengthen a work in progress, and adds value and meaning to the work that is ultimately published, helping inform the deliberations of press staff.” Peer review is a key mechanism in the dissemination of scholarship and central to how disciplinary knowledge is produced and legitimized.
Forms of Peer Review
There are a variety of kinds of peer review, depending upon the circumstances of disciplinary practice, the particular form of scholarly work, and the approach that the author(s) wish to pursue concerning the nature of their work. Anonymity is an important, and contested, issue in conversations around peer review. Ableist terminology (“blind” peer review) is no longer preferred. Here is a quick overview of the types of peer review routinely used by scholarly publishers to evaluate work (from ACP’s Peer Review Commitments and Guidelines):
Partly-Closed Review: Reviewers may be informed of the author’s identity, but the author is not informed of the identity of the reviewers. Publication occurs after the author’s revisions in response to reviewers’ comments satisfy the editors and the Editorial Board.
Fully-Closed Review: The identity of the author is not disclosed to the reviewers, and the identity of the reviewers is not disclosed to the author. Publication is contingent on the author responding to the critiques and commentary offered by reviewers to the satisfaction of the editors and the Editorial Board.
Peer-to-Peer Review: The identities of both author and reviewers are disclosed each to the other. The process may result in more substantial exchanges and revisions to the work. Such a review process may eventuate from a process that began as Fully- or Partly-Closed; in other cases it may be employed for interdisciplinary work in which authors collaborate and review each other’s contributions. Choosing to employ such a review process is always done with the advance approval of the Editorial Board.
Open Review: The work has been made publicly available through some accessible platform, and comment has been invited from a community of scholars. Various platforms (such as CommentPress or hypothes.is) may be utilized for organizing and curating the comment process; and each case may stipulate the terms by which reviewers may contribute to the work (e.g., anonymous, with names, with names and institutional affiliation). The selection of platforms and processes is undertaken on a case-by-case basis, and is shaped by those considerations that will best serve the work.