Challenges

We scientists want peer review for the science we produce and for the science we read, academic publishers live by it, the fairness and efficiency of funding decisions relies on it. About 1.4 million articles arrive at the publishing end of a peer review process every year. Peer review is essential for science.

The ability of peer review to deliver what is expected from it is increasingly often challenged.

Scientists-as-editors have to laboriously manage each peer review process with scientists-as-reviewers contributing (with varying levels of eagerness) their time and expertise. The duration of the process varies, largely with journal prestige; the average is more than 160 days.

Scientists-as-authors often face a much longer process with each manuscript. Out of necessity they are descending the journal prestige ladder one rejection at a time, and burdening one more scientist-as-editor and two more scientists-as-reviewers, and the operating budget of journals, by each iteration.

Scientists-as-reviewers do not get citable academic recognition or other compensation for their reviewing work. The thoroughness and competence of the reviews is too often questioned. Reviewer anonymity is important to protect fair criticism, but on the other hand allows various allegations of bias, which are harmful to science even when they are not true. Editors are only humans too, and under pressure from publishers. Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?

Organizing peer review costs money, even with volunteering scientists. Publishers absorb these costs per each submission, and have to cover many processes in order to acquire one article to publish. Publisher revenue depends on journal pricing and circulation, which largely depend on the number of citations the journal gets. But peer review has been shown to be very poor in identifying those articles that will get cited most.

Solution

Peerage of Science is...

…a community of Peers, formed through invitations between scientists who trust each other as scientists. The community is meant to become inclusive, so that eventually anyone considered a scientist by another scientist can join Peerage of Science. Membership in Peerage of Science is not anonymous.

…a web application offering automatically controlled, standardized, rigorous, fully anonymous peer review. In Peerage of Science, all the automatically enforced deadlines are known in advance by everyone, and the peer review is always on time. Each manuscript is peer-reviewed before submission to any journal, and only once. Authors benefit from predictably scheduled, fast and fair peer-reviewed peer review for their manuscripts, and from opportunities to get publishing offers from participating Journals. Quality of both the reviews and the manuscripts is quantitatively evaluated. Reviewers have personal incentives to provide as careful reviews as possible. Editors of participating Journals enjoy drastically reduced workload, no longer needing to manage each peer review process for months on end, usually ending up rejecting the manuscript. Editors get automatic alerts and can focus on tracking the best manuscripts, steering their journal with enhanced information and proactive decisions that can be completed on one go. With a simple click of a button, Editors can send a publishing offer to the Authors.

…a company based in Jyväskylä, Finland, with quite different Articles of Association from most other for-profit companies.

Peerage of Science…

…is not doing “open peer review”. It provides anonymous peer review, by qualified scientists only. While a Peer can invite anyone to join, the right to access and review work done by others is given only after service administration has verified identity and qualifications (at least one published article where the new Peer is first or corresponding author, in a peer-reviewed international journal).

…is not a “pre-print server” like arXiv.org or Nature Preprints. It is closed to the outside world. It strictly limits access to manuscript under peer review to only editors and those Peers involved in that particular peer review, and does not archive manuscripts to be accessed after peer review.

…is not providing an “alternative publishing model”. It is only concerned with providing better peer review for the benefit of everyone involved, including the publishing companies.

…is not charging fees from scientists.

You

To make this possible, Peerage of Science needs You to actively use the web service to your own benefit, and invite your fellow scientists to join the community also. Send a manuscript, write an Essay, get your journal to subscribe. Together we have the power to redefine peer review as it should be.

By the Peers, for the Peers.

Sincerely,
Janne-Tuomas Seppänen
Mikko Mönkkönen
Janne Kotiaho
– Founders