From COPE's Who owns peer reviews? Different journals use different types or models of peer review, all of which have various advantages and disadvantages.
- Single anonymous: the peer reviewers know the names of the authors, but the authors do not know who reviewed their manuscript.
- Double anonymous: the reviewers do not know the names of the authors, and the authors do not know who reviewed their manuscript (but if the research is published, reviewers can eventually know the names of the authors).
- Open: authors know who the reviewers are and/or the reviewers know who the authors are. In some journals, the named review reports are also published alongside the article. There are many variations of open peer review.*
- Transparent: similar to open peer review in that if the manuscript is accepted for publication, the content of the reviewer reports is openly available; however, the reviewers are not named.
- Interactive or collaborative: usually refers to interactions between the reviewers or between the reviewers and authors to facilitate the review process. The process can be open or anonymous, and in some instances, the reviewers’ identities are made known to each other, if not always to the author.
- Post-publication: open peer review operated by a journal that takes place after the manuscript is published.
- Post-publication commenting: public commenting or annotation that takes place on a published article. It can be anonymous or fully open, or be facilitated by a journal. An example is PubPeer, a platform for readers to comment on published articles.*
- Pre-print commenting: public commenting or annotation that takes place on an article shared on a preprint archive or server. Commenting can be anonymous or open. See where to find and publish preprints.*
*This definition has been modified from the source.