Transparent Peer Review A practical solution to implement open peer review at scale

1. Transparent Peer Review A practical solution to implement open peer review at scale ALPSP Conference | 12th September 2019 Matthew HayesDirector of Growthmatthew.hayes@publons.com

2. Peer Review and Research Transparency provides greater visibility and recognition potential to advance research integrity and reproducibility potential to impede research manipulation and fraudulent review

3. Interest in opening up peer reviewis growing Open Peer Review covers just one possibility in a broad field Whilst many researchers maintain reservations about opening up peer review, interest and support is growing… 40% 60% of publication peer reviewers of grant peer reviewers ...believe that more transparency of review identity would have a positive impact on peer review. Sources: Publons, Global State of Peer Review Report (2018) and Publons, Grant Review in Focus (2019)

4. ...but, operating more open peer review workflows can be challenging • There is a growing interest in transparent & open review models • However, many publishers face practical difficulties in adopting such models • Complex, legacy workflows -> publishers have either avoided opening up peer review or used manual workarounds, soaking up editorial time and limiting rollout

5. The Publons Solution • Publons has developed a robust and scalable model, working within established workflows and systems to support transparent peer review • The Publons model… • Scalable and robust • Requires minimal work from the publisher • Simpler process for researchers • Provides reviewers, authors and editors a 360° view of their contribution • Is GDPR compliant Why ‘Transparent’ Peer Review? While their peer review content is published, reviewers can remain anonymous vs Open Peer Review which obliges naming of reviewers.

6. Workflow for Publons Transparent Peer Review In partnership with ScholarOne 1 2 3 4 ScholarOne collects author and reviewer options, and peer review content -> sent to Publons Publisher sends feed of accepted articles to Publons Publons creates article peer review pages and registers peer review content DOIs Article publication triggers peer review content publication on Publons

7. Launch Partner Wiley 4 Wiley Publons “ The peer review history for this article is available at https://publons.com/publon/10.1002/eji.201848043 ”

8. Launch Partner Wiley 4 Publons

9. Launch with 10 further, multidisciplinary journals Launch with Clinical Genetics Next stage of rollout - announcement soon! Wiley Results September 2018 January 2019 September 2019 • Popularity 87% of authors choose transparent peer review • Reviewer Acceptances No meaningful differences (a small decrease in some journals, offset by a small increase in others). • Time to initial decision No meaningful differences on average, looking at participating journals as a whole. However, there were meaningful differences for two journals, where time to initial decision was quicker by around 20 days. • Editor behaviour With transparent peer review, more decisions are being made by the editor directly, rather than sending the article out for review. On average, editors are declining to send manuscripts out for review in 62% of cases compared to 53% of cases previously.

10. Next steps

11. We’re not just opening the scholarly record with transparent peer review – we’re actively building it, putting a spotlight on community-led evaluation.

12. Thank you Matthew HayesDirector of Growthmatthew.hayes@publons.com