To what extent can I refer to closed-access reviewer comments in my public task management workflow? I have written and submitted a manuscript to a journal owned by Oxford University Press. This manuscript describes the associated source code, which is stored in a public GitHub repository. The journal has sent this manuscript to reviewers, and they have responded with some suggestions on how to improve the code. I would like to implement these suggestions in my code.
To what extent can I refer to these suggestions in my public task management workflow (ie GitHub)? I'm not even sure who owns the IP to the peer reviews themselves, but I assume that, since it's a closed review system, I am not allowed to reproduce the comments. In that case, can I paraphrase these suggestions when I write my GitHub issues? Each GitHub issue is a public thread for tracking information about tasks, their scope and their progress. If yes, can I explicitly tag these issues as being derived from peer review? Or will this leak too much of associated IP? More broadly, how can I balance my desire for open and transparent software development, with a closed review process?
I think the other answer and comments focus too much on the legal aspects involved. There is also a community moral aspect to it. There is a good discussion in the Publons article Who owns the review.
The comments that the reviewer makes are meant to be only for the author(s) and editor. For the editor to help make a decision on acceptance of the paper and for the author(s) to either explain this decision or help improve the paper. Quoting this comments elsewhere isn't really part of the traditional process.
However, the issues raised by the reviewer need addressing in the code and you are following code practice by tracking issues using an appropriate (open) tool.
I think its important that you remember that the reviewers recommendations are just recommendations that you need to interpret in any case before you make any changes. I would recommend to make issues/tasks using your interpretations of what needs to be done. You should be able to state clearly both what needs to be done and why without quoting the reviewer at all.
This way you avoid any problems relating to copyright at all - publishing interpretations is fine. The recommendations are there to be acted on so there's no need to bother a probably already over-worked editor. More importantly this approach makes you think about what the changes are and why they are needed. This will help your understanding of the issues and how to fix them better.