Are there major non-APS/AIP journals that do not practice confidential peer review?

Question

One of the things that I think is particularly notable about the Physical Review journals (and other journals published by the American Physical Society and/or American Institute of Physics) is that they do not ask that referees keep the papers they are reviewing confidential. In fact, they encourage senior physicists to involve junior colleagues in the reviewing process. In fact, the pages in their refereeing system have a prominent notice:

If you are an experienced senior reviewer, we encourage you to ask a less-experienced junior colleague to co-review the paper.

I assume that it is not unique to physics that people have been informally asking colleagues for their opinions about paper. I was asked, circa 2005, by my post-doc advisor about a paper he told me he was refereeing for Physical Review D. It was a notable paper in our field, and I had read the arXiv version carefully when it came out. In theoretical particle physics, almost all papers are available on the arXiv well before publication, and this is true to somewhat lesser extents in other areas of physics, mathematics, and other sciences; so confidentiality is less of an issue that it might be elsewhere, as priority for innovations may be established by the dates at which preprints are published.

However, it seemed surprising to me when the Physical Review journals started explicitly asking senior referees to share the papers they have been sent with junior collaborators. Are there any other respected journals that have this policy—of trusting experienced referees to invite colleagues to join the reviewing process?

Answer 1

American Geophysical Union (AGU) journals have a co-review program that seems comparable to APS's, at least if I read this Journal of Geophysical Research—Earth Surface editorial correctly:

Co-reviewing allows a reviewer to include and recognize early-career co-reviewers who contribute comments on a manuscript. The journal's online manuscript review portal has a space for listing co-reviewers as a review is completed. Co-reviewing involves sharing the manuscript with one or two early-career scientists but not a large group, for confidentiality reasons.

The general AGU journal policy does not provide a similar level of detail, so I suppose it's possible different journals could have different implementations.

---

Then there are also journals that encourage a referee to invite colleagues to co-review, but formalize how this is done, in contrast to the more laissez-faire approach of APS. In doing so, they maintain a more strict sense of confidentiality (or at least the appearance thereof, depending on the degree to which the policy is adhered to).

Institute of Physics (IOP) extended their co-reviewing policy across all their journals as recently as June 2023. (It appears that the policy was originally introduced in 2020 and trialed on Nano Express, Journal of Optics, and Journal of Physics D.) The goal of the policy is the same as in the question:

Co-review allows two people to collaborate on a reviewer report, with both receiving recognition. We offer co-review in the hope that early career researchers with limited experience of peer review can work together with more experienced colleagues or supervisors to build their peer review competency.

However, IOP's process is somewhat more formalized, in the sense that the invitation to the junior collaborator should go through them:

If you are invited to review and wish to co-review with a colleague, select the ‘Co-review with a colleague’ link in the journal’s invitation email. You will be asked for the name and contact details of the person you will be co-reviewing with. Your co-reviewer will be invited to review the manuscript if we still require reviewers. If they accept the invitation you can work on the review together. The completed reviewer report form should be submitted to the journal through the co-reviewer’s ScholarOne account.

---

It appears that the Nature Reviews journals (e.g., Nature Reviews Physics, but not Nature Physics) have a similar initiative. I don't know any of the details beyond the stated policy:

Supporting early-career researchers The Nature Reviews journals are committed to facilitating training in peer review and to ensuring that everyone involved in our peer-review process is appropriately recognised. We have therefore started an initiative to encourage established referees to involve an early-career researcher (ECR) in our peer review process on all Nature Reviews journals. The review that they compile together will be considered a co-review, meaning that both receive recognition for their contributions. We will send instructions to the early-career researcher and ensure that their referee activity is logged on our systems so that they are recognised for their review activity.

Answer 2

I think the title of this question is misleading. You describe a situation in which reviewers are encouraged to co-review with junior colleagues (and from the phrasing, the journal encourages reviewers to get help from a single colleague, not a gaggle of them), which most researchers and academics would not interpret as "breaking the confidentiality of peer review".

In the strict sense of the word, I guess you are correct -- it does not matter whether the reviewer shares the manuscript with one other person or one hundred -- the manuscript is no longer confidential. However, I myself (and most if not all of my colleagues) would consider "confidential peer review" to mean "not made available to the public" (or any group of people).

In that context, I would consider "breaching confidentiality" to mean circulating that paper to a person or a group of people, without any intention of including them in the review process. E.g. the advisor asks their PhD student whether they'd like to learn how to do a review, the student agrees and the advisor shares the paper with a student -- that's completely okay. On the other hand, if the advisor said to all their PhD students "let's review and then discuss this paper together in our group meeting", that would raise some eyebrows.

After all, a number of individuals who have not reviewed your paper and are not in any way related to the journal will have had the chance to see your paper during the review process. Specifically, this would be all the reviewers that declined to review your paper -- the manuscript will often (but not always) be available to them in order to help them make their choice. So, I wouldn't distinguish between whether my manuscript was accessible to 3, 5 or 7 people before publication.

However, this is all fast becoming a moot point in some research fields which a very strong preprint culture. Even if the conference/journal is blind or double blind (so the reviewers can't see the author's names), in 80% of the cases, just sticking the paper name into a search engine will find you an arXiv preprint.

Now, to specifically answer your question with an example, this preprint culture has grown so strong, that some journals now offer their own preprint services. For example, the journal Computers and Electronics in Agriculture (no affiliation except having published there a couple of times) now offers to upload your paper, without review, to their preprint server at the time of submission. Specifically, from their "guide for authors":

In support of Open Science, this journal offers its authors a free preprint posting service. Preprints provide early registration and dissemination of your research, which facilitates early citations and collaboration.

During submission to Editorial Manager, you can choose to release your manuscript publicly as a preprint on the preprint server SSRN once it enters peer-review with the journal. Your choice will have no effect on the editorial process or outcome with the journal. Please note that the corresponding author is expected to seek approval from all co-authors before agreeing to release the manuscript publicly on SSRN.

You will be notified via email when your preprint is posted online and a Digital Object Identifier (DOI) is assigned. Your preprint will remain globally available free to read whether the journal accepts or rejects your manuscript.

Now, this is what I would truly consider "not practising confidential peer review" -- while no author is forced into it, they are essentially offering to put your draft out there, with your name on it, for all to see while it is under review. (And again, due to the prevalence of preprint servers such as arXiv, I wouldn't bat an eye).

(Finally, to note, there's another dimension of "confidentiality" -- that is, are the words that a reviewer writes confidential (between the reviewer, author and editor), or not. I am also familiar with a number of Computer Science conferences where the reviews themselves are also made public -- for a list of conferences practising this, you can check OpenReview)