Every year, millions of peer review reports are written. These reports influence publication decisions, improve manuscripts and help maintain the quality of the scholarly record. Yet we never ask who owns them?
The Hidden Output of Research
A peer review report is not just an administrative document. It is a carefully considered piece of scholarly writing. Reviewers draw upon years of expertise to assess methodology, identify weaknesses, suggest improvements and place findings within the wider literature. Some reviews run to several pages and may take many hours to prepare. In other circumstances, work of this nature would clearly be recognised as intellectual output. Yet once a review is submitted, most reviewers give little thought to what happens to it.
Peer review occupies a unique position within scholarly publishing. Authors write papers, publishers publish them and readers consume them. The roles and relationships are clear. Peer review is different. Reviewers are rarely paid for their work, yet they provide a service that is fundamental to the publishing process. Without reviewers, most journals would not be able to function.
The Ownership Question
What rights do reviewers retain over their work? Does the review belong to the reviewer because they created it? Does it belong to the publisher because it was produced as part of the journal’s editorial process? Does it belong to the editor who commissioned it? Or does ownership sit somewhere in between? Many reviewers have probably never examined the terms and conditions they agree to when accepting an invitation to review. Even if they have, the legal position may not fully address the ethical questions. Ownership and control are not necessarily the same thing, particularly in a system built upon voluntary contributions from the academic community.
What makes the issue more interesting is that peer review reports have value beyond their immediate purpose. They contain examples of expert judgement, methodological critique and scholarly evaluation. In a publishing environment increasingly influenced by AI, such reports represent a substantial body of knowledge that could be used to support automated systems, reviewer recommendation tools, manuscript screening processes and editorial decision-making. A reviewer who agreed to review a paper in 2015 may never have imagined that their comments could one day be used in this way.
The Transparency Gap
Most reviewers have very little visibility over how their reports are stored, analysed or reused. Authors are increasingly expected to disclose their use of AI, and many publishers now require detailed statements describing how AI tools contributed to manuscript preparation. Yet there is often far less discussion about how publishers use the intellectual content generated by reviewers. If transparency is important for authors, should similar principles apply elsewhere in the publishing ecosystem?
The growth of open peer review further complicates the issue. Some journals now publish review reports alongside articles, assign them DOIs and treat them as citable scholarly outputs. Reviewers may include them on their CVs and academic profiles, and in some disciplines they are beginning to attract recognition as contributions in their own right. Once a review becomes a recognised scholarly output, the traditional assumptions about ownership become harder to sustain. If authors retain rights over their publications, should reviewers retain comparable rights over their reviews?
The University’s Contribution
There is another stakeholder in this discussion that is often overlooked: the university.
Most peer reviews are completed during normal working hours or using expertise that has been developed through a researcher’s academic employment. Universities pay salaries, provide access to journals, support professional development and create the environment in which researchers develop the knowledge required to act as reviewers. In effect, universities are providing a significant amount of labour to support the scholarly publishing ecosystem.
This arrangement has long been accepted as part of the academic social contract. Researchers review papers because others review theirs. The system functions because scholars contribute to the collective advancement of knowledge. However, the publishing landscape has changed significantly over the past two decades. Many publishers now generate substantial revenues through subscriptions, article processing charges and transformative agreements.
If peer review reports are increasingly viewed as valuable assets that can be analysed, reused or used to develop new products and services, it is reasonable to ask whether universities are effectively donating resources that subsequently generate commercial value elsewhere. Few institutions appear to have considered this question, yet it becomes increasingly relevant as publishers seek new ways to leverage the data generated by the publication process.
How Valuable Is a Peer Review Report?
One way to explore the ownership question is to consider how we would behave if peer review reports were treated as scholarly outputs.
Imagine that every review report received a DOI, could be cited and appeared on academic profiles alongside journal articles, conference papers and books. Some journals already do this through open peer review, but it remains far from standard practice. If reviews were routinely recognised in this way, reviewers might pay much closer attention to how their reports were used, distributed and archived.
The issue becomes even more interesting when viewed through the lens of artificial intelligence. A single review report may have limited value, but millions of reports represent a vast repository of expert knowledge. They capture how experienced researchers assess evidence, identify weaknesses, evaluate novelty and judge significance. In many respects, they document the decision-making processes that underpin scholarly quality control.
Perhaps this is the real reason the ownership question matters. Historically, peer review reports were largely transient documents used to support a publication decision. Today, they may represent something more valuable: a growing body of intellectual content with potential applications that extend far beyond the manuscript for which they were originally written.
A Question Worth Asking
The current system largely functions because reviewers willingly contribute their expertise to support the advancement of knowledge. Most do so without expecting payment or recognition. However, scholarly publishing is changing. The emergence of AI, growing demands for transparency and increasing interest in research integrity are prompting questions that were not asked a decade ago. As publishers, editors and technology providers discover new value in peer review reports, perhaps it is time to ask whether reviewers should have a greater say in how those reports are used.
If a peer review report is valuable enough to help train the next generation of publishing AI systems, who should own it?
About the Author
Professor Graham Kendall has published more than 300 peer-reviewed papers and has over 25 years of experience in scholarly publishing as an author, reviewer, editor and researcher. He is Vice-Chancellor of GlobalNxt University, Malaysia, and an Emeritus Professor at the University of Nottingham.