These tools contribute to the network-based and collaborative aspect of research by opening up the discussion on already published scientific results. In this way, they can be viewed as post publication review tools.
Repositories can also offer peer review functionalities. By turning repositories into evaluation platforms the quality control of the scholarly communication process is given back to the research communities.
Independent peer review services are an integral part of the review from the publishing process that aim to provide a user-friendly and transparent review process, which benefits both authors and reviewers. These platforms advocate a network-based approach that fosters the collaboration between authors, editors and reviewers to improve the paper.
Motivations, training and support in peer review
Peer review in all its forms plays an important role in ensuring the integrity of the scholarly record. The process depends to a large extent on trust, and requires that everyone involved behaves responsibly and ethically. Peer reviewers play a central and critical part in the peer-review process, but too often come to the role without any guidance and unaware of their ethical obligations. COPE has produced some guidelines which set out the basic principles and standards to which all peer reviewers should adhere during the peer-review process in research publication. The aim has been to make them generic so that they can be applied across disciplines.
Over the course of the 2011-2012 academic year, MediaCommons and NYU Press jointly undertook a study of technologies, practices, and desires for open, online peer-to-peer review in humanities-based scholarly communication.
“Open peer review” (OPR), despite being a major pillar of Open Science, has neither a standardized definition nor an agreed schema of its features and implementations. The literature reflects this, with numerous overlapping and contradictory definitions. While for some the term refers to peer review where the identities of both author and reviewer are disclosed to each other, for others it signifies systems where reviewer reports are published alongside articles. For others it signifies both of these conditions, and for yet others it describes systems where not only “invited experts” are able to comment. For still others, it includes a variety of combinations of these and other novel methods.
The Collaborative Review Forum unites authors, reviewers and the Associate Editor – and if need be the Specialty Chief Editor – in a direct online dialogue, enabling quick iterations and facilitating consensus.
Publishers and publishing platforms are the two major groups which introduce alternative review methods. While journals play an important role in scholarly communication. Explore the various open peer review methods & solutions that publishers, publishing platforms & OA journals offer.