Examples
Worked examples
- Is an instance
A reviewer's ORCID record showing 30 reviews for a named journal over five years
Counter-examples
Looks similar, but isn't
- Not an instance
Informally reading a colleague's draft over lunch is feedback, not formal peer review in the creditable sense
Editorial commentary
Peer reviewer contribution is the intellectual labour of evaluating a scholarly submission’s validity, originality, significance, and clarity on behalf of a journal, funder, or conference — work that is distinct from authorship and from the editor’s own decision-making, even though the two are closely linked. It is increasingly recognised as creditable in its own right through ORCID review records, publisher-issued reviewer statements, and open peer review, rather than being invisible, unpaid labour with no public trace.
How it differs from related terms: Reviewer role typology is the controlled vocabulary used to distinguish types of review activity (manuscript, grant, conference, data, reproducibility) so that credit can be disaggregated rather than lumped into one undifferentiated “reviewed X papers” count; editorial contribution is a separate, higher-authority role that synthesises reviewer feedback into an actual accept/reject decision.
Disclosure conventions for peer review range from fully anonymous, where neither party is named, through single- and double-anonymous, to fully open review where the reviewer’s identity and report are published alongside the paper — the credit mechanism differs accordingly.
References
- NISO Peer Review Terminology Recommended Practice, NISO RP-29-2024
- ORCID Peer Review Records documentation
Also known as
Reviewer credit · Refereeing
Machine-readable encodings
Use in your systems
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vocab-term="Peer reviewer contribution"
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