Visibility of review files

[LucasRabaey]

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe.
When contacting potential reviewers for a manuscript, we find it counterintuitive to disclose full manuscript files to all potential reviewers we contact, regardless of their decision to accept or not.

Describe the solution you'd like
We would like to share the full manuscript with reviewers who have agreed to perform the review, not with all potential reviewers. This would require increased customization in terms of the files shared with reviewers. Ideally, they receive enough information to judge whether they will agree to the review when sending the request, and receive the full manuscript after accepting.

Describe alternatives you've considered
We have considered adding files that contain limited information, but if one reviewer accepts and we upload the full manuscript for them to review, this becomes visible/available for all other potential reviewers as well.

Additional context
This also relates to feature request #4043 concerning the UX for the decision to review and the review itself (i.e. different files/information available in different stages).

[abbeykelder]

I shared a similar request recently, so I am glad to see this here! Other ideas:

1. Hide everything past the "Agree to perform review" "Decline to perform review" buttons on the Review Request page, until the review has been accepted. This would be a useful change for other reasons, too, not least of which that we sometimes have potential reviewers get confused when they can see the entire review process and submission form on the same page they are sent to via the "accept/decline" link.
2. Allow editors to attach an optional "preview" file to peer review requests, containing an abstract or snippet of a work. For those who want to still attach a full article at this stage, this would be useful for them as well.

[ajrbyers]

I think there are various issues that all tie together including:

• Review assignment landing page #4043
• Review request page #4254

[abbeykelder]

Thanks for the additional context, Andy!
From the comments on the other issues, it's clear this is a pretty wide-running concern.
One thing I would note here (in reference to discussions brought up on those other pages) is that the "Review Guidelines" typically includes the review rubric and submission form, which is a lot of context for someone agreeing to perform a review before they get to that stage. The Review due date is already included in the top section of the Request.
Perhaps the Rubric/Summary Guidelines could be provided alongside the optional File preview I noted above?

Another quick note on why this update would be useful: we have had some reviewers never accept to complete a review, and instead simply bookmark the link they were sent and complete their review via the form before we removed their request from the system.

[ajrbyers]

The current plan is to take all of these requests into account and design an interface around a few new settings. This should allow most folk to run the review invite in whatever way they want.

[LucasRabaey]

That's great to hear, Andy! Feel free to contact us if you want some more input from our side, more than happy to provide that.