Biome | Progress in peer review

"Since November 2012, four BioMed Central journals – Frontiers in Zoology, BMC Biology, BMC Evolutionary Biology and BMC Ecology – have been ‘supporter’ journals of a new service for scientific peer review and publishing called Peerage of Science. This meant that manuscripts that had been reviewed through this initiative were encouraged, and that the Editors-in-Chief and Executive Editors of these journals would consider the accompanying reviews. The success of this innovative process has led to BioMed Central upgrading to full membership for these four journals. This now allows our Editors to extend publishing ‘offers’ to manuscripts submitted to Peerage of Science. Janne-Tuomas Seppänen, Co-Founder, Managing Director of Peerage of Science, postdoctoral fellow, University of Jyväskylä, Finland. To explain more about this initiative, and how our participation will benefit all involved with the peer review process, Biome interviews one of the co-founders of Peerage of Science, Janne-Tuomas Seppänen. Having founded Peerage of Science in 2011, alongside Janne Kotiaho and Mikko Mönkkönen, Seppänen is now managing director of the company. With the mission to fundamentally change how peer review is done, and to provide a service to authors, reviewers and publishers, Peerage of Science won the 2012 ALPSP (Association of Learned and Professional Society Publishers) Publishing Innovation Award. Seppänen is also an active scientist, and is currently an Academy of Finland postdoctoral fellow at the University of Jyväskylä, Finland."