How Will Your Paper be Reviewed?

Journals employ many different kinds of peer review workflows.  Before submitting your manuscript to a journal, check its author instructions for information on its peer review process so that you are aware how your manuscript will be reviewed.  Here are examples of the most common types of peer review:

• Single anonymous: Reviewers are aware of the authors' identities, but the authors do not know who reviewed their manuscript.
• Double anonymous:  Neither the reviewers nor the authors know each other’s identities.
• Open:  Reviewers and authors know each other’s identities. 
• Transparent: The actual peer review process can be single anonymous, double anonymous, or open but journals allow the option of having the reviewers’ reports, authors’ responses, and editors’ decision letters published alongside the accepted article.
• Collaborative.
  • Two or more reviewers collaborate to review a manuscript, discuss their concerns, and submit a single review.
  • One or more reviewers work with the authors to improve a manuscript until it reaches a publishable standard.

All Optica Publishing Group journals use single anonymous review. Optica and Optics Continuum offer transparent peer review: If authors and reviewers agree, the reviewers’ reports, authors’ responses, and editors’ decision letters are published alongside the accepted article.