The “impares”: conceptualization of non-accredited open evaluation in scientific communication

Abstract

Since its institutionalization in the mid-twentieth century, peer review has constituted the canonical quality-control mechanism of formal scientific communication, resting on an assumption of parity between reviewers and reviewed. However, the expansion of open science infrastructures and the consolidation of preprint servers have enabled the intervention of actors—early-career researchers, professionals from related fields, or specialists without formal institutional affiliation—who issue technical judgments on manuscripts without any homologation process regarding their level relative to the authors. This paper proposes the concept of “impares” (the “odd ones”) to designate such actors, defined through three components: the absence of formal homologation, the openness of the evaluative space, and epistemic value not conditioned by status. The concept is distinguished from related, already established categories: open peer review, post-publication review, and community commenting, by shifting the focus from the evaluative process to the actor who performs it. An illustrative example is offered, anchoring the definition in a case of post-publication evaluation in the biomedical sciences. The paper concludes that the proposed conceptualization fills a terminological gap in the scholarly communication literature and provides a starting point for future empirical research on the contribution of “impares” to manuscript quality.