Should reviewers of papers have their names published?

Editor—The Journal of Medical Internet Research (www.jmir.org), an open access journal that I edit, has for five years practised routinely what Dimoliatis proposes¹: reviewers are acknowledged at the end of each published article.

In our experience, concerns over reviewers becoming too uncritical only to see their name published are unfounded. Moreover, editors never follow blindly the recommendation of the reviewer(s). It is comparatively easy to identify review reports that are too uncritical or superficial. Reviewers' comments are intended mainly as an opportunity for authors to improve their manuscript. Few editors will admit this, but if editors really want to see something published, they will overrule the overly critical reviewers, and vice versa.

Herein lays the real (and only) problem of publishing reviewers' names, which we encounter from time to time. If one reviewer strongly thinks that a paper should not be published, but the second reviewer or editor overrules the recommendation of one reviewer, the reviewer may not be happy to see his or her name published at the end of a paper. We did have reviewers objecting to publish their name at the end of an article if we accepted it.

The appropriate solution to this is to educate readers that publishing reviewers' names is a mere acknowledgment of their work and the input they gave, and that it is not necessarily an endorsement of a manuscript. If this can be accepted, acknowledging reviewers at the end of articles will and should become common practice in other journals.