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Follow-up question to discussion in comments of this question.

Summary is that in 2015, there was a MDPI reviewer who was unhappy because their recommendation wasn't followed. The reviewer complained in the blogosphere claiming that the paper was published in spite of his serious objections, and that MDPI refused to let him see the other reviewers' reports or their contact information.

It's normal to not provide contact information of the other reviewers (since it breaks anonymity), but providing the other reviewer reports seems fine. I asked an MDPI employee about this last week and they claimed that it's already possible as a matter of course - their editorial management system allows each reviewer to see the other reviewer reports.

Something is contradictory here. I can think of many possible explanations, e.g. the reviewer didn't know how to operate the editorial management system, MDPI changed their review process between 2015 and 2021, or even the MDPI employee is lying/mistaken. I don't have any firsthand experience of MDPI's review process, hence I'm asking if anyone who has reviewed for (or has experience operating their editorial management system) can confirm if MDPI reviewers can see each other's reports.

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  • If anyone has reviewed for MDPI before 2015, I would still be interested in the answer.
    – Allure
    Mar 16, 2021 at 8:25

2 Answers 2

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This is an excerpt from an email I received in mid 2020 after reviewing a manuscript for the MDPI journal Atmosphere:

Dear Dr. <my name>,

We are writing to inform you that the following paper which you kindly reviewed has been published: <link to published paper>

Thank you for your participation in the review process. The paper was accepted by the academic editor after peer review by 3 reviewers and author revision. You can now see the comments of other reviewers by creating an account on our submission system at https://susy.mdpi.com with your review email <my email address> and visiting the reviews section.

Going back further in the search results, the oldest such emails are from 2018 (from the same and from another MDPI journal).

To check if maybe access is removed after some time, I just logged in and I still see other reviewers' comments for these papers.

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  • Did you register and check in their online system whether you can see the other reviews? In my case (see my answer), what they wrote in the e-mail contradicts what I actually see in the online system. Mar 16, 2021 at 8:10
  • @lighthousekeeper I did and they are there.
    – Roland
    Mar 16, 2021 at 8:13
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I confirm that you can see all the reviewers’ comments. I review for them since January 2020.

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  • It appears you must make an account to see them. Mar 16, 2021 at 7:27
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    I can see others’ comments even without logging in (only for the paper to which the link refers, of course). Once you log you can see every review.
    – Bayer
    Mar 16, 2021 at 10:28

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