Use of politeness strategies in signed open peer review

Abstract

Scholarly peer review is a complex collaborative activity that is increasingly supported by web-based systems. Yet little is known about how reviewers and authors interact in such environments, how criticisms are conveyed, or how the systems may affect the interactions and use of language of reviewers and authors. We looked at one aspect of the interactions between reviewers and authors, the use of politeness in reviewers' comments. Drawing on Brown and Levinson's politeness theory, we analyzed how politeness strategies were employed by reviewers to mitigate their criticisms in an open peer review process of a special track of a Human-Computer Interaction conference. We found evidence of frequent use of politeness strategies and that open peer review processes hold unique challenges and opportunities for using politeness strategies. Our findings revealed that less experienced researchers tended to express unmitigated criticism more often than did experienced researchers, and that reviewers tended to use more positive politeness strategies (e.g., compliments) toward less experienced authors. Based on our findings, we discuss implications for research communities, and the design of peer reviewing processes and the information systems that support them.

What is open peer review? A systematic review

“…Open identity peer review, also known as signed peer review ( Ford, 2013 ; Nobarany & Booth, 2015 ) and “unblinded review” ( Monsen & Van Horn, 2007 ), is review where authors and reviewers are aware of each other’s identities. Traditional peer review operates as either “single-blind”, where authors do not know reviewers’ identities, or “double-blind”, where both authors and reviewers remain anonymous.…”

Transparency in peer review: Exploring the content and tone of reviewers’ confidential comments to editors

“…A number of journals have shifted to processes that unmask reviewers' identity as either an optional or required part of peer review [19]. Studies examining reviewers' preferences for sharing their identity with authors [20][21][22] and the effect of such signed reviews on the quality, tone, and time spent on reviews have shown mixed effects [10,11,[22][23][24], perhaps reflecting different norms across different fields and reviewer pools. None of these studies indicate whether these unmasked reviewers can write confidential comments to editors.…”

Percepción de las revistas científicas españolas hacia el acceso abierto, open peer review y altmetrics

“…Existen numerosos estudios que analizan las opiniones y percepciones de investigadores individuales respecto a la web 2.0 (p.ej: Nández & Borrego, 2015), el Open Access (p.ej. : Zhu, 2017) y el Open Peer Review (p.ej: Nobarany & Booth, 2015).…”