Does open identity of peer reviewers positively relate to citations?

Abstract

Referees play an essential role in the peer review process, significantly contributing to improving the quality of scholarly publications. In the context that the Open Science movement is gaining increasing attention and support, the open identity of peer reviewers has become a crucial aspect requiring more relevant research. To enhance the comprehension of the relatively unexplored phenomenon of publishing reviewer identities, this study investigates how such identification and the academic performance of reviewers identified in the acknowledgements of articles relate to these articles’ citations. Our sample comprises 1,120 articles within the field of Biological Sciences and published in Nature between 2016 and 2020. The publication and citation history for 787 identified reviewers were obtained from Scopus to measure their academic performance. Based on Negative Binomial Regression results, we found that the presence of at least one reviewer's identity is not statistically associated with citations, whereas articles with all reviewers’ identities published tend to receive fewer citations. However, our dataset supports a significant positive correlation between the academic performance of recognised reviewers and the citation impact of the articles they reviewed. These findings have significant implications for the scholarly community and publication policies.