How to identify peer-reviewed publications: Open-identity labels in scholarly book publishing

Abstract

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.

Performance-based publisher ratings and the visibility/impact of books: Small fish in a big pond, or big fish in a small pond?

“…0916696)" ( Verleysen & Engels, 2012, p. 429). In Finland, the Federation of Finnish Learned Societies (TSV) has also developed a similar label, whereby scholarly publishers indicate themselves which of their books and articles have been peer reviewed (Kulczycki et al, 2019).…”

“…This has inspired a number of scholars to investigate book publishing more intensively, often in relation to national performance-based research funding systems (PRFS) (Zuccala, Giménez-Toledo, & Peruginelli, 2018). Some have investigated the prestige of publishers (Giménez-Toledo Q1 & Román-Román, 2009) as well as their specialization (Mannana-Rodriguez & Giménez-Toledo, 2018), and others have explained how peer-review labels in books can be used as an aid to evaluation procedures (Kulczycki, Rozkosz et al, 2019;Verleysen & Engels, 2014).…”

Ensuring Quality and Status: Peer Review Practices in Kriterium, A Portal for Quality-Marked Monographs and Edited Volumes in Swedish SSH

“…Another model in which the name of the reviewer is disclosed to the audience is the so called "open identify label" used in Central and Eastern Europe. Here, the naming of the reviewer, often a renowned scholar, functions as a quality mark (Kulczycki et al, 2019). In some cases, the academic quality assurance is expected to take place before the manuscript is submitted to the publisher, by colleagues and institutional seminars who read and critique the text as a service to the author(s) and the academic society.…”

The case for an inclusive scholarly communication infrastructure for social sciences and humanities

“…Apart from evaluation and impact measures, RIs can also support the assessment of scholarly quality. Innovative peer review practices, on the other hand, are meant to make the process more transparent, for example, through revealing the names of reviewers in the open-identity review ( Kulczycki et al , 2019a , 3), or to foster the exchange of ideas by making the reviews openly available during the process of the open peer review.…”