Peerage of Science

Peerage of Science is a scientific peer review service.[1] The company was founded in 2011 by the scientists Janne Kotiaho, Mikko Mönkkönen, and Janne-Tuomas Seppänen in Jyväskylä, Finland. The service was the winner of the 2012 Award for Publishing Innovation from The Association of Learned and Professional Society Publishers (ALPSP),[2] and of the 2013 recognition award from Communications Professionals of Finnish Universities.[3]

Differences to traditional peer review

The service has several practices that differ from the traditional approaches to academic peer review and submissions.

Author control over deadlines

Upon uploading their manuscript to the system, authors specify four deadlines:

  1. Deadline for sending peer reviews
  2. Deadline for peer-review-of-peer-review, the reciprocal judging of the accuracy of peer reviews
  3. Deadline for sending the revised manuscript
  4. Deadline for final evaluation of the revised manuscript

During the process, the deadlines are automatically enforced.

Open Engagement

Instead of reviewers being appointed by an editor, reviewers in this system choose what they want to review. Thus, the process may terminate at first deadline if there are no willing peer reviewers, or it may attract many more reviewers than the standard two. According to thesystem, the current average is 2.4 reviewers per manuscript, while some have attracted up to 8. Any user, including the authors themselves, can recommend a reviewer for a manuscript. However, peers from the same institutions as authors, and peers who have co-authored with authors in the last three years, are automatically excluded and can not peer review the manuscript.

Cross-evaluation

The motivation to participate as a peer reviewer in this system stems from a reputation system where the quality of the reviewing is scored by other users, and contributes to one's profile. Evaluation of other peer reviewers is an additional task for participating academics, but most appear to be eager to do this: while other stages are completed typically just before a deadline, the judging task is on average completed in just a few days.

Concurrent and shared journal consideration

Journals participating in the system's Select option have concurrent access to all peer review processes. Editors are free to make publishing offers to authors at any time, and authors are free to choose whether to accept or decline the offers. Journals participating in the system's Connect option have access to a process if authors choose to submit to that journal. In both cases, the same peer reviews are used by several journals, instead of being discarded in the event of rejection from one journal.

Business model

The company's services are free for scientists, and it does not pay peer reviewers. Publishers owning participating journals pay for usage of the service. Peerage of Science has established such contracts with e.g. Springer,[4] Taylor & Francis, BioMed Central, Elsevier and Brill.

References
  1. "Online Social Network Seeks to Overhaul Peer Review in Scientific Publishing". News.sciencemag.org. 23 January 2012. Retrieved 12 November 2018.
  2. "AlphaGalileo > Item Display". Alphagalileo.org. Retrieved 12 November 2018.
  3. "Peerage of Science picks up Finnish award - Research Information". Researchinformation.info. Retrieved 12 November 2018.
  4. "Springer and Peerage of Science team up". Springer.com. Retrieved 12 November 2018.
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