Reading peer review: what a dataset of peer review reports can teach us about changing research culture

Abstract

One of the first megajournals, PLOS ONE, has played a significant role in changing scholarly communication and in particular peer review, by placing an emphasis on soundness, as opposed to novelty, in published research. Drawing on a study of peer review reports from PLOS ONE recently published as an open-access book, Martin Paul Eve, Daniel Paul O’Donnell, Cameron Neylon, Sam Moore, Robert Gadie, Victoria Odeniyi, and Shahina Parvin¸ assess PLOS ONE’s impact on the culture of peer review and what it can tell us about efforts to change academic culture more broadly.