Peer review FEATURE


and we want to help them perform their services more efficiently,’ said Johnson. ‘The revenue model is not to charge researchers anything but to provide services to journals and publishers.’ He added that the exact charging model is still to be determined but will possibly be on a per- search or per-month basis.


Of course such things are never as straightforward


as they might sound. As


Johnson observed, ‘there are 101 challenges with building a platform from scratch; number one is probably building the community. We are not fooling ourselves it will be easy. It is a change in culture but that’s the way the world is going.’


Steps to success


Nonetheless, towards the end of last year Publons made some significant announcements towards its goals. First came the news that it would begin allocating digital object identifiers (DOIs) to post-publication peer reviews. According to the company, although DOIs are standard for published articles and datasets, the application of DOIs to peer review is a first. Preston, Publons’ CEO, explained the reasons behind the move: ‘Reviewers’ valuable comments and observations are now given


the credit they deserve, and this provides an incentive for reviewers to provide high-quality reviews, improving both the underlying science and commentary.’


‘Once you have a DOI it is citable and acts as a badge. One of our users has already started citing his post-publication review discussions in


‘Over the years we have got very good at having disagreements that lead to


good results’ Daniel Johnson


other papers,’ said Johnson. The assignment of DOIs means that academics can adds reviews they have done to publication records and therefore applications for funding and jobs. This development was followed by an initiative to also give researchers the ability to build a portfolio of their pre-publication peer review work, along with the opportunity for journals to validate the quality of these peer reviews.


According to the company, pre-publication peer reviews will not, for the most part, be


published; the existing types of pre-publication peer review – including closed, blind and double-blind – will be maintained. However, the initiative will mean that reviewers can show their activity in the academic community, and be given credit for it. Publons is also providing academic journals with the ability to ensure and show that all pre-publication peer reviews are validated. This should enable journals (both open access and paywalled) to prove the quality of the peer reviews behind their published papers. It will also enable pre-publication reviews to become an official part of researchers’ resumes. The MacDiarmid Institute for Advanced Materials and Nanotechnology, a national network of New Zealand’s scientists in these fields, is already considering the use of the Publons platform as the source of record for academic peer-review reporting when used in hiring and promotion decisions. Other organisations have also expressed interest, according to the company.


So, what is it like starting a company with a childhood best friend? ‘I guess it’s not for everybody,’ said Johnson, ‘but over the years we have got very good at having disagreements that lead to good results.’


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