Nature looks to open up 'black box' of science by publishing peer review files

The scientific journal Nature wants to show people the nitty gritty of academic publishing.

In a Monday editorial, the journal announced it would include peer review files with the papers it publishes, offering access to once behind-the-scenes processes in which reviewers critique scientific papers and authors respond with changes.

Publishing peer review files at Nature has been optional since 2020; starting Monday, it is now automatic.

“Our aim in doing so is to open up what many see as the ‘black box’ of science, shedding light on how a research paper is made. This serves to increase transparency and (we hope) to build trust in the scientific process,” the Nature editorial said. “Making peer-reviewer reports public also enriches science communication: it’s a chance to add to the ‘story’ of how a result is arrived at, or a conclusion supported.”

Opening up the peer review process is growing more common among scientific journals, but Nature is one of the largest and most influential journals to adopt the practice.

When a science study is submitted to a credible journal, the study will undergo a peer review, a process in which experts in the field probe the work for poor reasoning, bad research practices and data errors, among other issues. These outside experts share their feedback to journal editors and the authors in what are called referees’ reports.

“Peer review improves papers,” the editorial said. “The exchanges between authors and referees should be seen as a crucial part of the scientific record, just as they are a key part of doing and disseminating research.”

Nature’s new process will make the referees’ reports and authors’ responses public by default. The journal’s move comes at a time when trust in science has dipped. A Pew Research Center poll in fall 2024 showed that confidence in scientists had dropped about 10 percentage points from 2019 to 2024, and only 45% of Americans viewed scientists as good communicators.

Michael Eisen, the former editor of the scientific journal eLife and a proponent of revamping the scientific publishing process, said he viewed Nature’s decision as “a move in the right direction overall toward more transparency in publishing.”

“I think seeing the sausage is good,” Eisen said, adding that he thought it could help improve trust in science. “There’s a lot of criticism that stems from lack of understanding. That lack of understanding, from my point of view, stems from lack of transparency from scientists and science over what the process is.”

Eisen said the move could help skeptics of science see how much rigor and questioning is applied to key topics.

“With a vaccine paper, I think it would be good if people saw the scrutiny a paper goes through. It would help people understand and appreciate the science and how it’s contextualized better,” Eisen said.

At the same time, it could help prevent the overstatement of splashy findings.

“Maybe it will help people get past the idea that when a paper is published it’s bulletproof and there’s no questions remaining,” Eisen said.

Eisen said Nature could also make public its reviewers’ comments on rejected manuscripts, which sometimes get published by other scientific journals.

“The real radical move is publishing the reviews of all papers,” Eisen said. “Seeing what questions came up in the reviews of accepted papers is one thing; seeing why papers were rejected by journals is another.”