Black Box, Gold Standard? Views from authors, reviewers and editors on interdisciplinary peer review

This talk was presented at the University of Manchester Open Research Conference, 9 - 10 June 2025.

Despite facing critiques from across academia, double-blind peer review (DBPR) is still considered the ‘gold standard’ quality-assurance tool for the publication of academic research (Tennant & Ross-Hellauer, 2020). While some journals make use of ‘open’ peer ?review practices, and pre-print servers are making elements of academic publishing more transparent, DBPR is still used by the majority of academic journals as part of the publication process, with anonymity considered the best guarantor of reviewer objectivity.

However, DBPR remains to some extent a ‘black box’ (R. Smith, 1997) which elides the diverse and idiosyncratic practices of reviewers, editors and journals. These practices come into conversation – and even conflict – with one another during peer review of interdisciplinary publications.

Through surveys and interviews with authors, editors and reviewers from a range of disciplines, my Open Research Fellowship has found significant inconsistencies in DBPR practices for the review of interdisciplinary research – including unofficial ‘collaborative review’ practices; formal and informal structures for indicating reviewer confidence; and most concerningly a tendency for reviewers to decline interdisciplinary papers. This presentation examines these practices and their possible implications, and asks whether the ‘black box’ really is the ‘gold standard’, or if open-research-informed models of peer review might present productive opportunities.