Though the vast majority of journals endorse peer review as an approach to increase trust in the literature, few make their publication process and all the associated data (e.g. submitted manuscripts, peer review reports and editorial decisions of accepted and rejected manuscripts) available to evaluate effectiveness of interventions meant to improve the quality of the publication process. We argue that scholarly journals can and should do more to apply rigorous standards to their own peer review practices by opening up their manuscript management data for meta research. In this panel discussion, we will present an overview of some of the issues in the journal publication processes that hinder research integrity, and illustrate why increased transparency is needed. Followed by a journal’s perspective of what can be done to address this will be presented and we end with two case studies as examples.