We’re pleased to introduce peer review content in Web of Science™ full record pages. Read more.
As the academic community celebrates Peer Review Week 2021 and the essential role that peer review plays in maintaining quality and integrity, we too are focused on peer reviewers’ identity at the heart of the research and discovery process.
The Web of Science is the world’s most trusted publisher-independent global citation database, containing more than 2 billion cited references from more than 182 million records, none of which would be possible without peer reviewers. As part of our ever-evolving role in the scholarly ecosystem, we’re pleased to offer researchers a new open and transparent peer review reference at their fingertips.
As of today, open peer review content from Publons is displayed within the Web of Science full record pages. Full record pages of articles in the Web of Science Core Collection™ that include published and/or signed reviews, author responses or decision letters now feature a button enabling display of that review content. Readers will be able to access this content by selecting the ‘Open peer review’ button on the full record page.
Open peer review content is then displayed in the Web of Science full record page.
Reading peer review reports alongside final articles helps readers to better evaluate and understand the research they’re reading. We hope that positioning peer review content in the Web of Science alongside article metadata, full text links and citing article lists, will increase the visibility and utilization of that peer review information.
“Helping to uphold research integrity by providing the research community with trusted data and metrics is at the heart of what we do. The increased transparency provided through open peer review – and other open research practices – helps improve the integrity of the scholarly corpus”
In addition to contextualizing an article, a view of the peer review process for Web of Science Core Collection indexed journals illustrates the diligence and attention to detail that it takes to publish research at a consistently high impact level. This content can be instructional to early career researchers embarking on their first reviewing assignments.
Finally, where a published review has also been signed, we will link through to that individual’s profile to provide even more context around the expertise and identity of the reviewer. Review content may only be signed or published if each of the reviewer, authors, editor and journal agree to do so.
Only verified reviews will be displayed in the Web of Science. Read more about review display on Publons and the Web of Science here.
Peer review content in Web of Science author records
In addition to peer review content in full record pages, researchers will soon have access to peer review contribution summaries and metrics in Web of Science author records. Author records will display a summary of journals reviewed for and memberships to editorial boards, as well as metrics such as average review length and ratio of reviews to publications.
Pictured below is a Web of Science author record with peer review content.
This enhancement is a step closer to providing a comprehensive view of a researcher’s working life — from peer review, to publication, to editorial work — and increases the visibility of and importance placed on peer review contributions within the Web of Science. This in turns reflects the huge importance of peer review in the career of millions of researchers worldwide, from the newest PhDs and early career researchers to Principal Investigators and even Nobel Laureates.
You can see examples of signed and published reviews, author responses and decision letters here.
