Expert peer review is the essential component of scholarly publishing and currently the standard mode of validating the results of academic inquiry. Because of its critical role, there are increasing calls to make this part of the process more transparent with Open Peer Review.

There are pros and cons of Open Peer Review, so we would like to hear from you. Do you believe that Open Peer Review will catalyze a culture of open scholarly debate, or do you feel that it will prevent researchers from being completely honest in their critique?

Take our survey and share your experiences and thoughts!

Create your own user feedback survey

This survey will help us establish a clearer image of potential intervention areas, issues, and best practices that could aid in the creation of a more accessible and transparent digital environment for peer reviewing.

ScienceOpen has actively been facilitating the open peer reviewing process since its inception, not only within its network but also across the digital publishing landscape. With over 2 million indexed preprints from a variety of repositories, ScienceOpen provides a solid infrastructure for Open Peer Review. ScienceOpen has developed a brief survey to better understand researchers’ experiences with open peer review in the context of fostering a more open discourse around Peer Reviews.

It takes less than 5 minutes to complete the survey, and your responses will provide us with critical information that will be addressed further during Peer Review Week, which runs from September 19th to September 23rd. Everyone in the scholarly community, including students, publishers, and scholars, is invited to participate in the survey.

#PublishYourReviews

We recently joined ASAPbio’s #PublishYourReviews initiative, which aims to inspire more transparency, enrich the scientific debate with diverse knowledge, and ignite a culture of open preprint comments.

#PublishYourReviews: Open Conversation on Preprints and Reviewing

This is a critical project that has prompted us to look into other ways to adapt our publishing infrastructure to a more open and transparent workflow for maintaining and reviewing preprints and articles after they have been published.

Start reviewing today!

If you are interested in the topic, you can start reviewing articles anytime on ScienceOpen. We feature journals that are already actively implementing the open peer review workflow, both for preprints and publications. 

Get some inspiration and start reviewing publications from the UCL Open: Environment collection, featuring many preprints and multi-disciplinary research with an interest in all aspects of environment-related research. 

• COVID-19 & informal settlements: is ‘Stay Home’ safe? – UCL Open
• Moisture control design has to respond to all relevant hygrothermal loads – UCL Open
• Coping with oil spills: oil exposure and anxiety among residents of Gulf Coast states after the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill – UCL Open

The new Journal of Systems Thinking (JoST) is a great source for scholars to give their expert opinions on publications covering topics like innovation, and public understanding in the areas of Systems Thinking.

• Serving Beginning and Socially Disadvantaged Farmers in the U.S.: A Case Study Using the Agent Based Approach (ABA) to improve access to government programs and support
• Too Much Bureaucracy, Too Little Time : A Case Study in Using the Agent Based Approach to Analyze the Efficacy of the Environmental Quality Incentive Program
• The Missing Mismatch : A case study of Panama’s Public Security Systems Issues using the AgentBased Approach (ABA)

AfricArXiv Preprints is another collection where reviewers can give their contribution, by reviewing, publishing reviews, and facilitating the scholarly discussion on research topics coming from Africa.

• A lower bound for length of addition chains
• COVID 19 – Impact on Teaching & Learning: The Gauteng Province Experience
• Pedagogical integration of technology as an enhancement to teaching and learning in Gauteng public schools

In the section Review on ScienceOpen, you can learn more about all the guidelines and requirements for reviewing on our platform. Have a look and don’t hesitate to get in touch with our team, if there are any additional questions.

The Survey can be accessed and shared via this link: https://www.surveymonkey.de/r/DX6WSG8