As of December 2019, Nature Structural & Molecular Biology and several other Nature journals have implemented a transparent peer review option (https://www.nature.com/nature-research/editorial-policies/peer-review#transparent-peer-review). We now offer authors the opportunity to share with readers a peer-review file that includes anonymous referees' reports, authors' responses and our decision letters. This move follows pioneering efforts from EMBO Press and, more recently, Nature Communications. We are excited that this issue of NSMB features the first article whose authors have taken up this offer (https://doi.org/10.1038/s41594-020-0401-0), and we hope more will soon follow suit.

Traditionally, journals have kept peer-review reports and the correspondence between editors and authors confidential, and the peer-review process is thus often seen as a ‘black box’. However, calls for more transparency have increased: researchers want to see how publishing decisions are made, and they want assurance that referees and editors act with integrity and without bias. Reviewer reports often provide alternative viewpoints and insights into the merits and limitations of papers, and readers can benefit from such discourse. Opening up the peer-review process also allows the contributions of reviewers to be recognized. After all, reviewers invest a substantial amount of time and effort into assessing a manuscript, and they play a fundamental role in strengthening the work.

We will not edit reviewer reports prior to publication, but we will remove confidential or third-party content, and, in the case of transferred manuscripts, referee reports prepared for journals that do not operate a transparent review process. Importantly, reviewers who now agree to assess manuscripts for us should know that their anonymous reports might be published, if the author chooses this option when the paper is accepted. We of course alert our prospective reviewers when inviting them and hope they will agree that the benefits of enhanced transparency outweigh any perceived drawbacks.

In another initiative to promote transparency, we now ask our authors to share all data central to the main claims of their article as supplementary information or by depositing them in public data repositories. If there are data that can only be shared on request (for example, sensitive human data), authors should explain why in correspondence with the editor and include this explanation in the data availability statement. It has been our long-standing policy that authors are required to make data, materials, code and associated protocols that are necessary to replicate the findings of an article promptly available upon request or to state in the article any restrictions to access. Thus, sharing data upon publication, rather than by request, should not prove overly cumbersome. After all, these data need to be archived and sharing them, either within the article or in public data repositories, allows efficient and publicly accessible storage. This move not only increases transparency but also enables data reanalysis and reuse. Our colleagues at Scientific Data maintain a curated list of recommended data repositories (https://www.nature.com/sdata/policies/repositories). Deposition of certain types of data remains mandatory (https://www.nature.com/nature-research/editorial-policies/reporting-standards).

We look forward to seeing our authors and reviewers embracing these editorial initiatives. Feedback from the community is always welcome at nsmb@us.nature.com.