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review with its systems tailored to this, so we worked with them to design a new workflow.’ ‘Transparent Peer Review’ ensued, which is a Publons workflow with a ScholarOne API, and was initially applied to Wiley’s Clinical Genetics. The journal had been carrying out transparent review for several years, but processes were deemed to be labour-intensive for editors, with a low opt- in rate from authors. However, as Barros pointed out: ‘We launched our system at Peer Review Week last year, and within the first 120 days we got an opt-in rate of more than 80 per cent of 120 submissions. In the same period prior to this, only three to four articles had opted-in.’ Wiley was thrilled and has been rolling out the system to more journals ever since. Researchers can read reviews and scholarly discussion on Publons, which is accessible via a link from the published article. Reviewer reports, editor decision letters and author responses can be viewed and each element is assigned a digital object identifier (DOI) so readers can reference and cite content while reviewers receive recognition. The workflow also allows the reviewer to either sign reviews or remain anonymous. ‘Wiley has had no problems finding
reviewers and, depending on the journal, we see that between a quarter and a third of reviewers choose to sign reports, so given the choice, the majority still remain anonymous,’ highlighted Barros. ‘But, as the number of journals with transparent review grows over time, and more and more reviewers become exposed to this option, then I believe this will definitely change.’ ‘I think there was a concern amongst
early-career researchers that negative comments on more senior researchers’ work could affect their careers,’ he added. ‘But experience has shown that these concerns are not warranted.’ Since Wiley, more publishers have
adopted the Publons workflow, including Emerald Publishing Group, the Institute of Physics Publishing and The Royal Society. Barros, for one, is pleased with the diversity of publishers as well as reasons for turning to Transparent Peer Review. ‘For The Royal Society, this is about streamlining their existing process – its
6 Research Information February/March 2020
Tiago Barros
Robyn Mugridge
journal, Open Biology, is already open but this makes the peer review process more efficient and scaleable,’ he said. ‘Meanwhile, the IOPP wanted to give open peer review as an option to authors.’ Given the encouraging results so far,
Barros is now looking forward to forming partnerships with more publishers and is hoping to develop systems further. Right now, reviews and scholarly discussion content are available in text only, but this could soon change. ‘We’d like to include content such as tables and figures to provide a richer experience for users and make sure the value of those contributions is not just reduced to plain text,’ said Barros. ‘Inline reviewing is another option that would allow reviewers to comment directly onto manuscripts instead of simply having text at the end of the manuscript.’ Taking a step back, Barros is confident that a transparent approach can also incentivise quality reviews and help to address industry issues such as predatory publishing. But as the scholarly publishing community heads further down the road to transparency, other industry developments are also set to make big differences to the ways in which peer review is performed.
An easier way? In December 2018, open access digital publisher and proponent of collaborative peer review, Frontiers, integrated custom- developed artificial intelligence to its peer review platform, to ease manuscript handling and streamline the peer review process. So-called AIRA – artificial intelligence review assistance – is designed to analyse the quality of submitted manuscripts and the review process, as well as suggest actions and identify potential reviewers.
‘AIRA uses state-of-the-art algorithms
to recognise patterns in manuscripts and also check conflicts of interest, reviewer expertise and patterns of behaviour,’ said Robyn Mugridge, publishing partnerships manager at Frontiers. ‘It will also check for, say, plagiarism and image manipulation, and while each manuscript gets a human check following AIRA, using this means editors aren’t wasting time on manuscripts that aren’t up to our scientific standards.
“More and more AI tools are being used by academic publishers to select reviewers and summarise manuscript findings”
‘People worry about being replaced but that is not what AIRA does, as it is designed to support them through better decision making,’ she added. Frontiers isn’t alone with its foray into
the world of AI. More and more AI tools are being used by academic publishers to select reviewers and summarise manuscript findings, thereby saving editors, reviewers and researchers time. For example, Reviewer Finder API from Denmark-based UNSILO was recently adopted by open access publisher PeerJ. Meanwhile US-based Aries Systems uses so-called StatReviewer in its peer review management system; the tool assesses the statistical integrity of a manuscript. Like Mugridge, Barros is enthusiastic
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