Campaign proposal: Publicly share your journal-commissioned reviews

[ludowaltman]

Subtitle

Pledge to post any journal-commissioned peer reviews that you perform to an open review platform, whenever the reviewed paper is available as a preprint

Campaign co-creator/s

@CooperSmout, @fraserlab, @jpolka, @mbeisen

Rationale

Preprints are increasingly used to share research in a rapid and accessible fashion, but despite this trend few people are linking reviews to preprints. Meanwhile, traditional journals continue to recruit researchers to perform peer reviews for free, but then typically do not make these valuable reviews available for public view. This campaign aims to leverage the existing practice of journal review to accelerate preprint review culture, with a view to creating a more constructive and democratic review culture along the way.

What am I being asked to do?

By signing this pledge, you commit to sharing any reviews that you perform on behalf of a journal to an open review platform, providing that the reviewed paper is publicly available as a preprint (e.g., on a preprint repository like arXiv, bioRxiv, medRxiv, Research Square, SSRN, etc.). You can choose to sign your reviews, or post them anonymously/pseudo-anonymously (see below). You can choose which review platform to use, providing it is freely accessible and links your review to the preprint in question, but ideally we suggest choosing a platform that renders Digital Object Identifiers (DOIs) so that others can easily cite your review. As an additional pledge, you can also agree to exclusively review papers that have been shared as a preprint.

Who can sign?

This campaign is open to researchers in all fields.

When will my pledge activate?

Your pledge will activate as soon as you sign it, meaning that you should share the very next review that you perform, if the reviewed paper is available as a preprint. If you would be interested in signing the pledge only when more people have signed, please contact the campaign organisers.

How can I post my review anonymously/pseudo-anonymously?

Some review platforms enable you to post reviews pseudo-anonymously. An example is PREreview, where you can use an alias that is linked to your PREreview account but does not reveal your identity. In addition, [James Fraser](mailto: [email protected]) and [Michael Eisen](mailto: [email protected]) have both committed to posting reviews on behalf of anyone who would like to maintain their anonymity (please get in touch directly to pursue this option).

Suggested review platforms

See this spreadsheet for a range of platforms that accept preprint reviews and the various features they offer

[essepuntato]

I like it a lot! How can I sign it?

BTW, the platform I’m using to upload my reviews is https://qeios.com — free for review, provides DOI, and upload metadata on Crossref. Disclosure: I’m part of the advisory board.

[CooperSmout]

Hi @essepuntato, thanks for your enthusiasm! You'll be able to sign the campaign once we publish it to the website. In the meantime, we're using this forum to fine-tune the campaign details and seek feedback from the community (like yourself :))

Great suggestion RE: Qeios. I didn't actually realise until now that it accepts peer-reviews. I also see that reviews can link directly to the original preprint, which is a feature we'd like to prioritise in this campaign (also DOIs). We've discussed a few other options, each with their strengths/weaknesses, and were thinking that rather than locking people into a specific platform we could list a range of options and let people choose for themselves. If you have thoughts on this strategy let us know!

EDIT: We've created this spreadsheet to highlight the various platforms and different features they offer (edits welcome)

[ragamouf]

I thought a couple of useful channels when the campaign is ready would be https://resbaz.github.io/resbaz2021/ 23-26 Nov 2021, and Force11 Conference Dec 7-9 https://www.force11.org/meetings/force2021#callforproposals

[CooperSmout]

Thanks Liz! Are you attending/presenting? If the latter you could potentially sneak a FOK slide into your talk ;)

[ragamouf]

For ResBaz, I'm organising - we still have some space in our program actually if you'd like a presence? Our hacky hours 3-4pm AEDT will be in gather.town so you could hang out there and talk about it?
For Force11 I probably couldn't sneak in a FOK slide as my talk is focussed on showcasing my team's training materials.

[mhmdhsini]

I like the idea and would support the campaign as well.

[daaronr]

This seems great! Do you see any legal challenges or objections? Could journals 'identify you by your review and blacklist you'?

[daaronr]

I had earlier proposed that this should be something authors pledge to do, i.e.,

"I will post all reviews of my work that I get from all submissions".

This could also provide a credible evaluation record of your work (useful in the years you may spend trying to get a paper 'published' in some fields)

[jpolka]

Thanks David! While we don't anticipate legal obstacles to reviewers posting their own writing, it might be more complicated for authors of a reviewed paper to do this: copyright would be held by the reviewer. However, we do plan to encourage people signing this pledge to invite others to review their own preprints. Jessica

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On Tue, Apr 12, 2022 at 7:58 PM David Reinstein ***@***.***> wrote: I had earlier proposed that this should be something *authors* pledge to do, i.e., "I will post all reviews of my work that I get from all submissions". This could also provide a credible evaluation record of your work (useful in the years you may spend trying to get a paper 'published' in some fields) — Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub <#40 (comment)>, or unsubscribe <https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/AAD3CYZZ6GXITAQFPV5TVNLVEYEYVANCNFSM5BWLRTQA> . You are receiving this because you were mentioned.Message ID: ***@***.***>

[a3nm]

Hi, I agree it doesn't seem legal for authors to share reviews without the reviewer's agreement.

For reviewers, however, I don't see a copyright problem or indeed any legal problem. (I am not a lawyer, of course.) I do see however a problem of expectations: in fields where the common practice is for reviews to be private (and confidential), it would seem appropriate for reviewers to point out, when they accept a review request, that they intend to do this.

This is in particular the case for reviews of papers that end up not being accepted, if the review divulges some ideas of the otherwise unpublished paper. Publishing the review may violate some expectation of privacy, as reviewers invited to review a paper are expected not to communicate about the findings of the unpublished paper that they are given to review. (Of course the right solution to all of this is for papers to be published as preprints before any reviewing happens.)

[jpolka]

Hi David, while I don't foresee any legal obstacles (reviewers don't typically sign an agreement to transfer copyright to the journal), journals could certainly object to the practice and decline to invite someone to review again. We will be encouraging reviewers to get some clarity about journal policies before posting, or better yet, accepting a review invitation. Jessica

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On Tue, Apr 12, 2022 at 7:11 PM David Reinstein ***@***.***> wrote: This seems great! Do you see any legal challenges or objections? Could journals 'identify you by your review and blacklist you'? — Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub <#40 (comment)>, or unsubscribe <https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/AAD3CY5STPU7TQWT763AOXDVEX7KZANCNFSM5BWLRTQA> . You are receiving this because you were mentioned.Message ID: ***@***.***>