Is it a Peer-Review Label? Presenting Reviewers’ Names in Scholarly Books in Poland

Peer-review label serves to mark out the peer-reviewed books and articles by publishers. Such labels are used among others in Finland and Flanders (Belgium) where procedures of labelling are formalized. A label on the book means that a book was peer-reviewed and a peer-review was controlled by a publisher which archived the documentation of this process.

In this study, we aim to investigate whether presenting the book reviewers’ names on the editorial pages is a form of peer-review label. A practice of exposing names of referees is very common in the Central and Eastern European countries. To achieve the aim, we have investigated how 20 biggest Polish academic book publishers accept manuscripts for publication.

We have conducted a mixed-method sequential explanatory study, consisting of 20 semi-structured interviews with the head of publishing houses and two surveys addressed to 600 authors and over 800 reviewers of the monographs published by these publishers. This triangulation allows us to investigate publishers’ perspectives on their own practices and to verify publishers’ claims on conducted peer-review and actual evaluation practices.

Our findings show that presenting the reviewers’ names is actual confirmation that the peer review was conducted, reviewers were experts in the fields, the authors received the reviews, and the documentation of the peer review was archived. The majority of the publishers did not ask reviewers whether their names can be exposed. They assumed that it is a common practice known to authors, reviewers, and publishers. Our analysis reveals that the Polish practice is largely consistent with Finnish and Flemish regulations.