Given the importance of peer review in ensuring the quality and integrity of published research, an increasing amount of work is ongoing aimed at increasing the speed, quality, and fairness of the process. Such activities are being captured in a recently launched online registry, ReimagineReview, an ASAPbio project funded by the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, developed in partnership with Wellcome and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.

An editorial from Nature describes how the journal will use ReimagineReview to document its own peer review innovations. Following its finding that 67% of authors would like publishers to experiment with alternative peer review models, the journal is currently investigating transparent peer review by publishing anonymous referee reports in Nature Research journals.

Nature is not alone in testing ideas for improving the peer review process – journals such as eLife and F1000Research have experimented with open peer review models. Best practice guidelines for open peer review have been published recently to support the increasing number of journals wishing to transition to this model. It is hoped that such guidelines, together with the ReimagineReview repository, will enable journals and publishers to learn from one another and improve the evaluation and development of innovations in peer review.

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Summary by Tracey Warren PhD from Aspire Scientific

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