Publons
 | |
| Available in | English |
|---|---|
| Owner | Clarivate Analytics |
| Website |
publons |
| Users | 175,000 |
| Launched | 2012 |
| Current status | Online |
Publons is a website and free service for academics to track, verify and showcase their peer review and editorial contributions across the world's academic journals. It was launched in 2012 and by 2017 more than 175,000 researchers have joined the site.[1][2] Publons' mission is to "speed up science by harnessing the power of peer review".[3] Publons claims that by turning peer review into a measurable research output, academics can use their reviewing record as evidence of their standing and influence in their field.
Publons also provides:
- tools for publishers to find, screen, contact and motivate peer reviewers;
- data and insights for the academic community to better understand global peer review behaviour;
- peer review training for early-career researchers; and
- features for academics to discuss and evaluate the world's published research.
Reviewers can choose whether or not to make the content of their review open access following publication of the reviewed publication, though journals can choose to override this. Review content is shared using a Creative Commons CC BY 4.0 license. It has partnerships with major publishers, including Springer Nature, Oxford University Press, BMJ, SAGE, Wiley and more, and with related services such as Altmetric and ORCID.
Background
Publons was founded by Andrew Preston and Daniel Johnston to address the static state of peer-reviewing practices in academic research publishing, in view of encouraging collaboration and speeding scientific development.[4] The Publons name is an homage to the "publon", the "minimum unit of publishable material". The company is registered in New Zealand and has an office in London, UK. Publons was acquired by Clarivate Analytics in 2017.
Publons Academy
The Publons Academy is Publons' peer review training course for early-career researchers . The free, online course requires students to practice writing real reviews that are assessed by a supervisor. Upon completion of the course, graduate reviewers are made discoverable to Publons partner journals on the site who can invite these reviewers to perform real pre-publication peer reviews.
Reception
TechCrunch remarked that lack of transparency leads to many problems in the publication process, and Publons purports to help with that.[5] ResearchInformation noted that while the site supports both pre- and post-publication review, not all reviews are published in deference to existing publication norms.[6] Nature noted that peer review is an important job, and reports on the reactions of two of Publons's most prolific reviewers.[7]
Publons initially reached out to academics through unsolicited bulk email to build awareness of the free service. This was cited by email service providers for being violation of acceptable use policies.[8] Publons retired unsolicited emails in 2016 and has since focused on growing its userbase by enabling reviewers to add verified records of their peer review contributions as they are performed.
See also
References
- ↑ Ravindran, Sandeep (2016-02-08). "Getting credit for peer review". Science. American Association for the Advancement of Science. Retrieved 2016-09-15.
- ↑ Spence, Paul: "Wellington startups that stayed up", in Idealog, 15 September 2016
- ↑ "Publons". publons.com. Retrieved 2016-06-16.
- ↑ Preston, Andrew; Johnston, Daniel. "The Future of Academic Research". doi:10.6084/m9.figshare.871466.
- ↑ Shu, Catherine. "Academic Startup Publons Gives Peer Reviewers Credit For Their Work". Techcrunch. Retrieved 5 September 2014.
- ↑ Harris, Sian. "Tracking and Validating Reviews". Research Information. Europa Science Limited. Retrieved 5 September 2014.
- ↑ van Noorden, Richard. "The scientists who get credit for peer review". Nature. Nature Publishing Group. Retrieved 9 October 2014.
- ↑ "ScientificSpam DNSBL on Twitter". Twitter. Retrieved 2016-02-24.