Harnessing the power of peer review

Research is facing a spate of worrying issues: a reproducibility crisis, significant delays in publishing and disseminating peer-reviewed findings, a surge in the volume of retractions and admissions of fraudulent or questionable research practices, to name a few.

All of these issues are leading to increasing public and media skepticism as to the quality and integrity of research.

In times like these, it’s more important than ever to be able to find, screen, contact and motivate competent peer reviewers. We need these experts to carefully scrutinize findings and ensure that trustworthy research gets out to the world quickly, so we can expand the sphere of human knowledge.

Herein lies another problem: journal editors tell us that finding qualified peer reviewers and getting reviewers to accept an invitation are the hardest part of their job, and it’s both slowing down and compromising science.

At the recent ScholarOne User Conference in Madrid, we showed how Publons is tackling this problem head-on. Publons has a suite of measures that include training reviewers in order to expand the pool available to journal editors, as well as innovative tools to find, screen, contact and motivate academics to peer review the world’s research better and faster. You can download the presentation here.