Reviewing the reviewers: how social and traditional media repurpose open promotion reviews

Abstract Peer review is a central mechanism for allocating credibility in science, traditionally protected by confidentiality to ensure candid critique and institutional legitimacy. This article examines the consequences of transparency by focusing on Poland, where promotion reviews are legally public documents. Using functionalist and external-legitimacy perspectives, the study investigates how open reviews are repurposed beyond the institutions that commission them. The research employs a comparative content analysis of two arenas: mainstream news media and an academic blog. Findings reveal that social media commentary often performs "second-order" evaluation—scrutinizing the reviewing practice itself, including contradictory recommendations and weak argumentation. In contrast, mainstream journalism typically uses review excerpts as evidence for stories about prominent individuals and controversies, rather than scrutinizing the review. These patterns demonstrate how opening promotion reviews subjects them to different media logics, creating distinctive forms of public accountability rather than a uniform increase in epistemic auditing.