Author-guided Open Peer Review – Open Scholar C.I.C.

"It is time to challenge the idea that scientific peer review can only be arranged and handled by journal editors. We propose a research assessment process complementary to journal-handled peer review where authors themselves can invite experts to openly evaluate their work.

The Open Peer Review Protocol and our recent article on academic self-publishing describe in detail the requirements for implementing author-guided open peer review. The key features are:

• Authors invite expert peers to formally evaluate their work posted in any online archive (libraries, repositories, preprint servers, etc).
• Reviewers who accept submit a detailed qualitative and quantitative assessment of the work.
• The reviewer’s name and any conflict of interest are publicly disclosed.
• Reviews are published with a creative commons license (or similar) and become publicly available along with the original work.
• Reviews are  subject to commentary and evaluation by the entire community.
• Author-guided open peer review can be implemented at any stage of an article’s lifetime: a) before journal submission, (b) during journal peer review (in agreement with the journal’s editor), and (c) after journal publication.

Read the Open Peer Review Protocol for more detailed implementation instructions and read and sign the Manifesto of Independent Peer Review."