PUBLONS: A Platform for Reviewer Effort Recognition… Finally!!

Over the last years, I have been regularly invited to act as a reviewer for various journals.  Peer reviewing is an essential element of scientific publishing, adding a layer of quality control to what is published and regarded as ‘scientific’.  In today’s digital world, considering the growth of open source publishing, and the proliferation of predatory journals, information-overload and ‘google-science’, ethical and rigorous peer-reviewing is the last barrier between ‘science’ and ‘ideology’.  At the end of the day, the terms ‘fake facts’ and ‘fake news’ have become weapons in the hand of ideologues.  and even worse…  demagogues.  Peer-reviewing is by no means a perfect instrument.  But it works pretty well.  Unfortunately, unlike publication activity, reviewing activity receives little recognition in the scientific community and it is rather secondary compared to impact factors, A or B ranked journal publications.  Moreover, it is more enjoyable to ‘create’ and ‘research’ than to ‘criticise’ and ‘review’.  Given the anonymity lending validity in the process, reviewers rarely get recognition for their contributions to the improved state of the final publication.  At the end of the day, they put effort and provide useful advise to improve the work of others.  And this without any return (except perhaps a discount or a time-limited free access to articles).  Recently, I discovered a Facebook group called:  “Reviewer 2 must be stopped“.  This is an area where members share their issues and – mostly bad – experiences with reviews.  This is more of a fun page, but… it hints at the unthankful job of acting as a reviewer.  Your peers will praise you for the great papers you have published…  but not for the sub-standard science and irrelevant papers that you have kept out of circulation.  And also not for the contribution you made to others’ great publications.  A small contribution and a small, but yet significant, motivation for reviewers is offered by the online platform PUBLONS.  This is website, which collects, verifies and attributes reviews to researchers according (ORCID Profile).  It aims to become for reviews what Google Scholar Profiles and Impact Factor have become for publications.  Reviewers are offered the possibility to download their verified review report as a PDF and compare their statistics with others.  This makes reviewing activity visible and is a useful addition to the good old publication list. We are not there yet, but it is a start!!

 

 

 

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