同行评议多是匿名评审，匿名评审又叫盲审，通行方法是单盲，就是杂志知道评审者是谁，但作者不知道。有的杂志不告诉评审者作者是谁，有的杂志将作者信息全部告诉评审者。过去这种流行方式也受到学者担心，因为容易受到作者名声的影响甚至左右。小保方的论文所以能顺利通过匿名评审过程被《自然》接受发表，其中一个原因显然就存在这种问题，因为论文作者中有几个学界著名科学家，他们的名声是影响评审的重要因素。这个例子大家都真实见证了。由于匿名评审存在不客观甚至错误判断的问题，学术出版领域一直在探索新的评审模式。
最近一些年，学术出版领域开始实行一种开放评审的方法，就是作者和评审者都相互知道对方，甚至有的杂志可以让双方进行交流。这种方式试图给作者更多申辩的机会。但作者和评审者直接交流也存在相互达成不合理默契的后果。尤其是作者和评审者的熟悉程度会影响评审的客观性。为了减少评审对学术重要性的主观影响，有的杂志实行发表后评审作为匿名评审补充，例如Plos One实行的政策，发表评审只考虑写作、设计和逻辑性质。学术影响力和水平依靠发表后公开评审。这种发表后评审已经成为一种新的重要模式。也有杂志尝试另外一种新评审方法，就是双盲评审方法。双盲评审就是作者和评审者都相互不知道对方的盲审方法。双盲评审在人文社会科学领域被普遍采用，但是在自然科学领域比较少见。上周Conservation Biology提出该杂志将考虑执行双盲评审。墨尔本大学生物学家Mark Burgman是该杂志主编。Burgman说从去年该杂志就在尝试这种方式，发现这种方式受到许多学者尤其是年轻科学家和少数族裔科学家的强烈支持。目前杂志正在编辑委员会和保护生物学学会会员内部讨论这一政策。如果该政策被执行，将成为一种持续性政策。文章作者北卡大学海洋保护学者Emily Darling指出，评审过程确实存在偏差，例如女性作者就容易受到歧视。有研究发现，女性的学术水平在晋升过程中往往被贬低。该政策的目的是控制评审偏差。女性和少数族裔科学家往往是双盲同行评议政策的受益者，这些学者往往受到不不平对待。获得学术职务需要高水平的学术著作，减少这类偏差可以让这些学者受到公平的对待。由于小同行内部往往大家都相互熟悉和了解，双盲同行评议形式上容易，但真正实行过程中，评审者很容易猜到作者是谁。不过支持者认为，虽然这种猜测确实存在，但也有猜测失误的情况，这可以抵消部分影响。关于双盲同行评议的公平性也有杂志进行过研究。2013年后，《自然地学》和《自然气候变化》就将双盲同行评议作为一种选择模式。《自然》主编Philip Campbell说，论文作者背景影响评审意见的问题一直受到广泛关注。但Campbell说现在仍无法确定双盲同行评议是否优越于单盲同行评议。2013年12月，大约有15%的《自然地学》22%的《自然气候变化》投稿作者选择双盲同行评议，但支持这种同行评议的读者比例更高。不过导致这种区别的一个可能是了解这个政策的作者比较少，由于需要在投稿过程中删除所有的作者信息，许多作者往往图方便不选择这种方法。另外一个比较大的问题是，一些名气比较大的作者为增加发表几率，往往不选择双盲同行评议模式，这必然影响最终结论。Conservation Biology采用的强制政策则可减少这种影响。Langenberg说两个自然子刊将继续采用自愿选择评议模式的政策。《自然气候变化》杂志副主编Alastair Brown说，他们将比较两种评议模式的一致性。不过双盲模式的支持者越来越多，因为这种过程更科学合理，对减少评议偏差是一种探索。 In "double-blind" review, which is more common in the humanities than in the hard sciences, the identity of the authors is concealed from the reviewers, and vice versa, lest the knowledge of authorship or concern about disapprobation from the author bias their review. Critics of the double-blind review process point out that, despite any editorial effort to ensure anonymity, the process often fails to do so, since certain approaches, methods, writing styles, notations, etc., point to a certain group of people in a research stream, and even to a particular person.[30][31] In many fields of big science, the publicly available operation schedules of major equipments, such as telescopes or synchrotrons, would make the authors' names obvious to anyone who would care to look them up. Proponents of double-blind review argue that it performs no worse than single-blind, and that it generates a perception of fairness and equality in academic funding and publishing.[32] Single-blind review is strongly dependent upon the goodwill of the participants, but no more so than double-blind review with easily identified authors. A conflict of interest arises when a reviewer and author have a disproportionate amount of respect or disrespect for each other. As an alternative to single-blind and double-blind review, authors and reviewers are encouraged to declare their conflicts of interest when the names of authors and sometimes reviewers are known to the other. When conflicts are reported, the conflicting reviewer can be prohibited from reviewing and discussing the manuscript, or her review can instead be interpreted with the reported conflict in mind; the latter option is more often adopted when the conflict of interest is mild, such as an ancient professional connection or a distant family relation. The incentive for reviewers to declare their conflicts of interest is a matter of professional ethics and individual integrity. While their reviews are not public, these reviews are a matter of record and the reviewer's credibility depends upon how they represent themselves among their peers. Some software engineering journals, such as the IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering, use non-blind reviews with reporting to editors of conflicts of interest by both authors and reviewers. A more rigorous standard of accountability is known as an audit. Because reviewers are not paid, they cannot be expected to put as much time and effort into a review as an audit requires. Therefore, academic journals such as Science, organizations such as the or the American Geophysical Union, and agencies such as the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation maintain and archive scientific data and methods in the event another researcher wishes to replicate or audit the research after publication.[33][34][35] Prepublication reviews[edit]Anonymous peer review[edit]Anonymous peer review, also called blind review, is a system of prepublication peer review of scientific articles or papers for journals or academic conferences by reviewers who are known to the journal editor or conference organizer but whose names are not given to the article's author. In some cases, the reviewers do not know the author's identity, as any identifying information is stripped from the document before review. The system is intended to reduce or eliminate bias, although this has been challenged – for example Eugene Koonin, a senior investigator at the National Center for Biotechnology Information, asserts that the system has "well-known ills"[36] and advocates "open peer review". Others support blind reviewing because no research has suggested that the methodology may be harmful and that the cost of facilitating such reviews is minimal.[37] Some experts proposed blind review procedures for reviewing controversial research topics.[38] Open peer review[edit]Open peer review describes a scientific literature concept and process, central to which is the various transparency and disclosure of the identities of those reviewing scientific publications. The concept thus represents a departure from, and an alternative to, the incumbent anonymous peer review process, in which non-disclosure of these identities toward the public – and toward the authors of the work under review – is default practice. The open peer review concept appears to constitute a response to modern criticisms of the incumbent system; therefore, its emergence may be partially attributed to these phenomena. Postpublication reviews[edit]The process of peer review does not end after a paper completes the prepublication peer review process. After being put to press, and after 'the ink is dry', the process of peer review continues as publications are read. Readers will often send letters to the editor of a journal, or correspond with the editor via an on-line journal club. In this way, all 'peers' may offer review and critique of published literature. A variation on this theme is open peer commentary; journals using this process solicit and publish non-anonymous commentaries on the "target paper" together with the paper, and with original authors' reply as a matter of course. The introduction of the "epub ahead of print" practice in many journals has made possible the simultaneous publication of unsolicited letters to the editor together with the original paper in the print issue.
