The Streetlight Effect represents an observation bias that occurs when individuals search for something only where it is easiest to look. Despite the significant development of Post-Publication Peer Review (PPPR) in recent years, facilitated in part by platforms such as PubPeer, existing literature has not examined whether PPPR is affected by this type of bias. In other words, if the PPPR mainly concerns publications to which researchers have direct access (eg to analyze image duplications, etc.). In this study, we compare the Open Access (OA) structures of publishers and journals among 51,882 publications commented on PubPeer to those indexed in OpenAlex database (\#156,700,177). Our findings indicate that OA journals are 33% more prevalent in PubPeer than in the global total (52% for the most commented journals). This result can be attributed to disciplinary bias in PubPeer, with overrepresentation of medical and biological research (which exhibits higher levels of openness). However, after normalization, the results reveal that PPPR does not exhibit a Streetlight Effect, as OA publications, within the same discipline, are on average 16% less prevalent in PubPeer than in the global total. These results suggest that the process of scientific self-correction operates independently of publication access status.

翻译：街灯效应是指个体仅在最容易观察的地方进行搜索时产生的观察偏差。尽管近年来后出版同行评议（PPPR）取得了显著进展（部分得益于PubPeer等平台的推动），但现有文献尚未探究PPPR是否受此类偏差影响。换言之，即PPPR是否主要关注研究人员可直接获取（例如，用于分析图像重复等）的出版物。本研究将PubPeer平台上被评论的51,882篇出版物中出版商与期刊的开放获取（OA）结构，与OpenAlex数据库（索引量达156,700,177条）中的数据进行对比。结果表明，OA期刊在PubPeer中的占比比全球总量高出33%（在评论最多的期刊中这一比例达52%）。这一结果可归因于PubPeer中的学科偏差——医学和生物学研究（其开放获取程度更高）的占比过高。然而，经标准化处理后发现，PPPR并未呈现街灯效应：在同一学科内，OA出版物在PubPeer中的占比平均比全球总量低16%。这些结果表明，科学自我纠正的过程独立于出版物的获取状态。