With my colleagues, I’ve been discussing many upcoming changes in journal publishing as the university with which we are affiliated recently cancelled their subscription to all Elsevier journals. Aside from the inconvenience of journal access when writing our own peer-reviewed articles, our discussion broadened to other upcoming changes in the publishing world that might fundamentally change the nature of publishing in peer-reviewed journals. The current publishing model depends on the willingness of many well-trained and intelligent scientists to freely contribute their time to the greater good of science by reviewing manuscripts, while the publishing houses make millions of euros/dollars/bitcoins* selling subscriptions back to the academic institutions where many of us work. Currently there is no mechanism for reviewers to receive credit for actively contributing to science; most institutions only credit their academics for publishing articles, winning competitive grants, or teaching.
Enter Publons, a platform that collects reviews and rates the quality of reviews associated with participating reviewers. The principal objective of Publons is to provide academics with yet another metric to include in our CVs, but one that shows another aspect of contributions to the scientific community. Once a member, they even give real rewards (1 yr premium accounts with github & figshare) to the best-ranked reviewers per quarter. The promise of such a metric is that it benefits directly those with free time to donate to science - principally post-docs who need extra ways to bolster resumes and have time to constructively criticize manuscripts. This seemed like sufficient reason to join, which I did, but also because there have been a number of controversial papers recently in my field (e.g., Vellend et al. 2014 PNAS). A service such as Publons would allow readers to consider additional perspectives, beyond those presented in a given article or published in response. Given space limitations in peer-reviewed journals, some of these discussions simply don’t have a unified platform for such exchanges, although blogs (Dynamic Ecology) and services like Faculty 1000 or Peerage of Science deserve mention. Like these efforts, the main sticking point is reaching a critical mass; until that point, relatively few people will actively contribute. In my dream world, there will be links to Publons from online articles that will allow interested readers to objectively criticize work in which they have expertise and authors will have more space to explain or justify their position. Constructive discussions should push science forward in general and I hope that publishers can contribute to this process by providing links to services like Publons or F1000. I can also seeing this as a good educational tool for early career scientists, especially Master’s and PhD students, to see well-done reviews and also how to respond politely and thoroughly to reviewers. What Publons has done right is that they provide a hook, i.e. a metric of reviewer quality, to encourage such discussions. Perhaps it is too early to say what they have done wrong... *bitcoins are now taxable income in the US! |