Abstract

Recent years have seen increased critical attention to classic peer review as a formal scientific quality assurance process. Recognizing the benefits of transparency, the present work seeks to take stock of openness in peer review practices in criminology- and sociology-related journals. Specifically, I assess variation across journals in whether the reviewer comments and editor decision are shared with reviewers. To do so, I emailed ~50 criminology-related and ~30 sociology-related journals and asked about their peer reviewed practices. I found that the majority of criminology and nearly all sociology journals for which I had information shared the reviewer comments and editor decision with the reviewers. However, a nontrivial proportion of criminology journals (~24%) did not share or shared partially (7%). The value of sharing peer reviews and the editor decision is discussed as well as some barriers to the practice.