In case you’re wondering what exactly is meant by the term “open peer review”, you’ll find a list of key characteristics below:

Open peer review is an umbrella term for a number of overlapping ways that peer review models can be adapted in line with the ethos of Open Science, including making reviewer and author identities open, publishing review reports and enabling greater participation in the peer review process (definition by Tony Ross-Hellauer as cited below).

These may include:

• Open identities: Authors and reviewers identities are known to each other and to the public
• Open reports: Review reports are published alongside the relevant article.
• Open participation: The wider community to able to contribute to the review process.
• Open interaction: Direct reciprocal exchange between author(s) and reviewers is allowed and encouraged.
• Open pre-review manuscripts: Manuscripts are made immediately available (e.g., via pre-print servers like arXiv) in advance of any formal peer review procedures.
• Open final-version commenting: Review or commenting on final “version of record” publications.
• Open platforms: Review is de-coupled from publishing in that it is facilitated by a different organizational entity than the venue of publication.

Ross-Hellauer T. What is open peer review? A systematic review [version 1; referees: 1 approved, 3 approved with reservations]. F1000Research 2017, 6:588 (doi: 10.12688/f1000research.11369.1) CC0 1.0 Public domain dedication.

Tennant, J. Defining Open Peer Review at ScienceOpen. May 15, 2017. http://blog.scienceopen.com/2017/05/defining-open-peer-review-at-scienceopen/