Open and transparent peer review of research results posted as preprints can speed up the cycle of scientific discovery. It is a low-cost solution to a wide range of challenges posed by highly selective journals with high subscription prices or APCs, long waits for editorial decisions, and challenging feedback and recognition structures. On ScienceOpen, you can post a review of any of the nearly 2.5 million preprints from every major repository and discipline or add any preprints that are missing via DOI.

To mark Peer Review Week coming up at the end of September, we invite you to a month-long celebration of open peer review and to begin exploring preprints on ScienceOpen, submit a substantial review, and compete for one of three prizes in our open peer review competition.

With the support of scite.ai, we will give three lucky winners a free one-year subscription to Scite and encourage them to continue the conversation in our network and beyond.

The rules are very simple, and we are looking forward to publishing and promoting all your reviews in the open.

To take part in this competition, you need to:

1. Register for a free profile on ScienceOpen and connect your ORCID account. (This older blog post may be useful –Manage your research articles freely on ScienceOpen)
2. Learn more about open peer review by checking out all the resources of ASAPbio, a scientist-driven non-profit organization promoting transparency and innovation in life science communication. On their website, you will find detailed information about reviewing preprints and can sign the reviewer’s pledge, which aims to promote a culture of open commenting on preprints. Not sure how the reviewing process works on ScienceOpen? Check out our About Page on Review on ScienceOpen.
3. Submit your open peer review by September 29^th and get a chance to win a year’s subscription to scite.ai.

We will hold a drawing at the end to select the three lucky winners from the authors of the reviews we receive. Once their reviews are published, all reviewers will be able to benefit from our context of over 88 million publications and continue the conversation in our network.

In order to review as an expert, researchers require a persistent ORCID author ID with at least 5 publications. ORCID is not only integral for authenticating the author’s profile, but it also helps by synchronizing and adding all your publications on ScienceOpen. ORCID helps us maintain a level of quality control while sharing the academic expertise and context that a particular reviewer brings to the review process beyond status or academic hierarchy. If you don’t have 5 publications yet, contact us at feedback@scienceopen.com to apply for a status upgrade.

Get inspired from our preprint collections!

All reviews on ScienceOpen are published with a Creative Commons Attribution License CC-BY (4.0) license and also receive a Digital Object Identifier (DOI) from CrossRef, similar to a formal research publication. This means that reviews are re-usable, citable, and permanent records of your reviewing activities, and therefore all of your review activities can be integrated with ORCID, Publons, and ImpactStory, helping to build your profile as a researcher.

Where to start?

ScienceOpen currently features hundreds of collections, and below we want to highlight just a few of our preprint-exclusive collections where you can easily find articles to review.

ScienceOpen Preprints – featuring submissions across various disciplines. Use our smart search and filter tools to find articles relevant to your field of expertise!

UCL Open: Environment Preprint – is a new, open, and transparent open access journal where high-impact disciplinary and interdisciplinary research is published that showcases radical and critical thinking on real-world issues, with the overall aim of benefiting humanity. Explore new preprints related to all the disciplines linked to the environment and start reviewing today!

UnisaRxiv – is designed to provide a platform that allows for rapid dissemination of the latest findings in diverse topics and to promote submissions from any grade of researcher at the University of South Africa and beyond. Researchers at all career stages, including early career researchers, professionals, and senior scholars are invited to submit and review the high-quality research manuscripts featured on the collection.

AfricArXiv Preprints – is dedicated to speeding up and opening up research and collaboration for African scientists and helping to design the future of scholarly communication globally. With many disciplines covered, researchers can get quick access to hundreds of preprints ready to be reviewed.

Journal of Systems Thinking Preprints – is the first and only open-access post-publication peer-reviewed (PPPR) journal dedicated to scientific research in the areas of Systems Thinking (cognitive complexity), Systems Mapping (visual complexity), Systems Leadership (organizational complexity), and Systems Science (ontological complexity).