In recent years there has been a growing demand for the recognition of our work as a peer reviewer since this is the most important step to guarantee the quality of scientific publications. Unfortunately, for a long time this work has been anonymous and scarcely recognized in our curriculum and as a criterion for hiring and permanence.
Recently, Publon, the platform of Web of Science, has begun to register, in addition to the metrics of the number of publications and citations, a separate graphic for the peer reviews made in indexed journals. Although this could be still insufficient, I think it is an important step that should have influence on those who evaluate our academic activity.
The Publon website explains how to carry out this process. It's very simple
https://publons.freshdesk.com/support/solutions/articles/12000012195-how-do-i-add-peer-reviews-to-publons-
How do I add peer reviews to Publons?
Modified on: Fri, 12 Apr, 2019 at 1:53 PM
Publons allows you to add reviews performed for journals or conferences to your public profile (with the privacy settings you choose). We can then verify your reviews, which can be used in promotion and funding applications.
There are four simple ways to populate your review record on Publons:
1. Add reviews performed for partnered journals
Reviews performed for partnered journals can be instantly added to your profile as you do them. Simply follow these steps:
We send you a confirmation email on purpose to make sure we never collect review records from people who accidentally checked the box in the review submission form.
We make this two-step process even easier. Simply turn on the 'Automatically add reviews from partnered journals" setting in your profile settings. With this setting enabled, you just need to check the box in the review submission form and you're done!
* This option appears in the peer-review submission system the journal uses, such as ScholarOne or Editorial Manager.
2. Send review receipts to [email protected]
If you've reviewed for journals that are not yet partnered with Publons, you can still add verified records of those reviews to your profile.
Publons verifies these emails with the journal and adds the record to your profile (subject to the journal's privacy policy).
You can speed things up by adding the review using the form on your Private Dashboard first, and including the URL of the review in your email to [email protected].
To see exactly how to add reviews through [email protected], please watch the video below:
3. Enable auto-updates
Digging up old emails can take some time. So where we can, we’ll do the work for you! We work with our partners to look back at their review records for up to five years and update our users’ review history. Simply turn on the 'Automatically add reviews from partnered journals" setting in your profile settings and whenever we find a review, we'll add it to your profile and let you know.
4. Add reviews through the forms on the site.
You’ll find the pre-publication review forms here. You can use these forms to add unverified pre-publication reviews which will appear on your profile with the privacy settings you specify.
Note that you are unable to create journal entries on Publons. If you would like to add a review for a journal not in our database through the forms on the site, please contact us with the journal title, URL and ISSN and any other relevant information and we'll add it for you.
.
Since six Months after I became a PhD student in 1988 I have been "used" as a reviewer for several journals, as well as Mathematical Reviews and other indices. I have done this duty about 400 times by now.
I do not find it terribly relevant to discuss my tasks, and especially I would not want my reviews to perhaps become public. There will always be a risk in having the actual reviews posted; someone might be able to gain access and post the database. I see very little use of the proposed service, as I have them stored on my own computer, which is the only place I see that it fits.
Can you tell me what would be the point?
Dear Dr. Patrikson
Thank you very much for your opinion.
In Publon, the reviews made are not published nor the articles that were revised. Just the graphic shows how many revisions were made by the reviewer and in which journals. Only that.
However, if the reviewer still does not want their profile to have that information, it is their choice. This is not mandatory. If that information is automatically appearing in your profile, just write a message to Publon to delete that graphic.
However, I think that as I said before, although it is not the ideal solution for the recognition of the work as a reviewer, at least you can choose if you want the Web of Science to show this academic activity in your profile . I'm sure many people would agree.
REVIEW POLICY ON PUBLONS 📷
- Does not allow reviews to be publicly displayed
- Only allows reviewers to display the journal they reviewed for
- Does not allow reviewers to sign or publicly display reviews of rejected publications subsequently published in another journal.
I use publons. It is useful to look how many reviews you made as well as detailed statistics. Public profile shows only number, journals and recognition/rankings of reviewers. It is a useful tool for editors to find good reviewers.
Regards
GB
I agree. Publon works together with the journals and the privacy policy is respected. Thank you very much Dr. Boczkaj.
Best regards,
One thing more - you get an inventory of all your reviewing activities - this is very useful to handle so big list of activities for years.
The registration of records is very simple - you forward to Publons an e-mail received from the journal after completed review.
regards,
GB
Dear Alexander Batista Duharte , dear colleagues, have you realized that Elsevier offers certification for peer reviewers?
Are you scared of peer review? You’re not the only one…! Plenty of would-be reviewers are put off from engaging as a referee due to a lack of familiarity with the processes or because they think they are not sufficiently experienced to review someone else’s work. Partly as a result of this, editors often struggle with finding reviewers. And even when you might be feeling confident enough to get stuck in with peer review, it’s often unclear just how you transform your enthusiasm into concrete action. With that said, it’s clear that peer reviewing often comes with certain challenges. Enter the new Researcher Academy Certified Peer Reviewer course!
https://www.elsevier.com/connect/reviewers-update/want-to-become-a-certified-peer-reviewer
Dear Ljubomir Jacic.
Thank you very much for the promotion of the course.
I sincerely believe and know that many agree with me, that publishers(Elsevier, Springer ... etc) should pay the reviewers. I think that this way they will have less difficulty finding good reviewers and reviews.
Publishers earn a lot of money and peer review is an essential activity in the process. It is a time and energy consuming and that the reviewers do voluntarily without remuning. That is not fair and it is time to change that landscape.
Best regards,
Dear Alexander Batista Duharte , maybe the follwing research question , related to this one, will bring the new light to peer-reviewer's recognition in terms of peer review.
https://www.researchgate.net/post/Is_paid_peer_review_a_good_idea_Do_you_have_anything_to_say#view=601d26f0d7955107ea31d87e
Alexander Batista Duharte,
I believe it is healthy to acknowledge reviewers' effort and time on Publons. However, the crazy numbers of reviews per year, as shown on Publons, may indicate such numbers were accomplished sacrificing the quality of reviews. I can't imagine reviewing over 100 manuscripts a year while teaching and researching!
There is a possibility that some reviewers may scramble for quantity and may not reject unpublishable manuscripts since rejection might impact their tally on Publons.
We need to pause and ponder!
How One Society Is Supporting Peer Review Excellence in their Community
IOP Trusted Reviewer status — a certification which, once achieved, demonstrates an exceptional level of peer review competency...
https://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2021/05/11/how-one-society-is-supporting-peer-review-excellence-in-their-community-an-interview-with-laura-feetham-of-iop-publishing/?informz=1
Recognition in peer review is not just about recognizing the peer reviewers for their voluntary service to scholarly publishing and the research system as a whole, but it encompasses a few other aspects as well...
Being an anonymous reviewer, year-in-year-out, without any public recognition of our review work limits our abilities to contribute. With no public acknowledgement for our work at one journal, we won’t be appreciated by other editors or journals. If they approach us to review, it will be because of our other persona — an experienced author.
This is beginning to change. While almost all journals now have internal peer reviewer databases, many publicly list the names of their reviewers, some publish their review comments with names attached, many give certificates or offer incentives, like free access to subscription journals for a period of time. Publishing-related agencies are increasingly working on peer reviewer recognition. Publons, for example, supports peer-reviewer recognition by hosting reviewers’ profiles, linking with their review works, rating them, providing them with certificates, identifying them as mentors, offering awards, and collaborating with other agencies, such as ORCID...
https://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2021/10/12/recognition-in-peer-review/?informz=1
Recognition takes various forms such as discounts on publication charges or free access to information. Journals also have annual acknowledgements of their reviewers and could link their contributions to their ORCID profiles...
https://www.universityworldnews.com/post.php?story=20211012145206222
I don't find it necessary to be celebrated for my very many peer reviews - reviewing is just something that we need to keep doing, in order to NOT have MORE lousy papers in our journals as it is. Keep up the good work! :-) I have from time to time asked PhD students to read and comment manuscripts that fall on my desk, so to speak, in the hope that they will "learn the trade" of refereeing - as they may one day have to do the duty themselves.
We reviewers should NOT be paid - to review is a duty, as YOU rely for your manuscript to be scrutinised.
Characteristics of ‘mega’ peer-reviewers
Our study has found that reviewers that had peer reviewed at least 100 papers within a 12 month time-frame had more publications and citations in total and within a one-year time frame, a higher h index, and received more Publons awards as compared to the control group of reviewers that had reviewed between 1 to 18 reviews as indexed in the Publons database...
Article Characteristics of ‘mega’ peer-reviewers
The recognition should have happened a long time ago. Reviewing articles takes time and effort from researchers and credits need to be mentioned. Besides, constantly being referred by journals to peer review their articles is, in some aspects, a good indicator of how active your are in a field. Some may disagree, but I have yet to come across journals that send their articles to incompetent researchers for reviewing, unless of course they are coerced to do so due to availability issues.
Doing peer reviews is also a way to help enhance your own visibility in the field. Regularly contributing high-quality and timely peer reviews will get noticed by editors. Regularly accepting review assignments and submitting excellent reviews on time will often leave a favorable impression with editors. If you are an academic on the tenure path, a journal editor might serve as a future external reviewer for your promotion case. Serving as a peer reviewer for multiple journals is a signal that you are gaining visibility as an expert in your area...
https://jphmpdirect.com/2022/08/29/writing-constructive-peer-review-reports/
While peer review is a fundamental element of academic research, it has not yet been investigated extensively as a scientific research topic in and of itself, mainly due to lack of access to peer review data. We therefore see it as our responsibility to work jointly with the academic community to change this, and to respond to researchers’ calls for such data to enable them to study peer review as a research topic)...
https://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2022/09/08/the-peer-review-workbench-an-interview-with-bahar-mehmani/?informz=1&nbd=6f03e560-5431-4744-8998-e00223ee7a82&nbd_source=informz
Recognizing Preprint Peer Review
Public review of preprints offers many benefits. It enables reviewers to focus on the science itself, allows authors to engage in constructive dialog with reviewers, and provides context on preprints for readers. cOAlition S and EMBO Postdoctoral Fellowships have recently announced that they recognize peer-reviewed preprints as peer-reviewed publications, and some journals are accepting reviews from services such as Peer Community In and Review Commons...
https://asapbio.org/recognizing-preprint-peer-review
Researchers push preprint reviews to improve scientific communications
Shifts in research culture, incentives, and technology would be needed for wide adoption...
https://www.science.org/content/article/researchers-push-preprint-reviews-improve-scientific-communications
As recognition in peer review is yet to be applied across the sector, I would like to see ghost-written peer review reports become a thing of the past. Giving every reviewer credit for their contributions to a review report enhances transparency and gives credit where credit is due. Introducing co-reviewing fosters collaboration, alleviates reviewer pressure, and supports a more inclusive future of peer review. By implementing co-review and opportunities to give feedback to reviewers, publishers can strengthen the peer review process and contribute to the advancement of scientific knowledge and innovation...
https://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2023/07/26/guest-post-ghost-writing-peer-reviews-should-be-a-thing-of-the-past/?informz=1&nbd=6f03e560-5431-4744-8998-e00223ee7a82&nbd_source=informz
STRATEGIC SOLUTIONS TO RECOGNIZE AND REWARD PEER REVIEWERS
"It is imperative to recognize and reward peer reviewers for their significant contributions to the advancement of research. By extending gratitude and tangible acknowledgment, we celebrate individual efforts and cultivate a collective ethos that values the dedication and expertise that peer reviewers bring to the forefront of progress.
The group brainstormed on strategies to better recognize and reward peer reviewers. The group’s Solution Canvas also highlights the benefits for the stakeholders impacted by this challenge: an increased reviewer pool and more robust research as a result of greater diversity...
The Solution Canvas emphasizes the promotion of peer review as a vital exercise in critical thinking, contributing to the shared knowledge base within the field. Additionally, the group acknowledged the significance of collecting data from peer review systems to establish baseline data. Establishing a baseline for author and reviewer diversity lays the foundation for ongoing progress and allows for measurable growth.
To enhance peer review and empower reviewers for optimal contributions, the group proposed strategies centered around mentorship and training programs. The group also put forth solutions to reward and incentivize peer reviewers, such as personalized acknowledgments, expedited processing for researchers with a minimum of three reviews, Publons credit, and more.
The solutions outlined by the group can result in tangible improvements in journal metrics as well as a positive response from the community. Fostering author and reviewer diversity not only aligns with ethical considerations but also contributes significantly to the overall enhancement of scholarly endeavors..."
https://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2024/04/26/guest-post-elevating-scholarly-publishing-through-collaboration-insights-from-publisherspeak-us-2023-part-2/?informz=1&nbd=6f03e560-5431-4744-8998-e00223ee7a82&nbd_source=informz