PeerJ launches today! (and we’re in it!) « Sauropod Vertebra Picture of the Week #AcademicSpring

"Today our paper on sauropod neck anatomy is formally published in PeerJ. There’s not much new to say about the paper, since we posted it to arXiv last year and told the world about it then (post 1, post 2, post 3). Although a lot more attractive in form, this version is almost identical in content, modulo some changes requested by the PeerJ reviewers, and some changes to the figures to make sure every part of every figure was CC BY or otherwise in the public domain. Many thanks to everyone who gave us permission to use their images, especially Scott Hartman, who is rapidly getting to be the go-to person for this sort of thing just by doing good work and being a nice guy. The big news, of course, is not the paper but the outlet. We’re excited about PeerJ because it promises to be a game-changer, for lots of reasons. Mike has a nice article in the Guardian today about the thing that is getting the most attention, which is the cost to publish. I blogged about it last fall, when I bought the max bling lifetime membership–for about one-tenth of the OA publication fee for a single article from one of the big barrier-based publishers.  Then there’s turnaround time: for our paper, a mere 72 days, including both submission day (Dec. 3) and publication day (Feb. 12). My fastest turnaround before this was 73 days for my sauropod nerve paper, but that was from submission to posting of the accepted manuscript, not publication of the final version of record. Prior to that I’d had a couple of papers published within six months of submission, but that was definitely the exception rather than the rule.   And sadly, I’ve had several situations now where a paper  languished in peer review for six months.And that brings me to peer review–the real 'peer' in PeerJ. When you sign up a lifetime membership, you agree to review one paper a year for them to keep your membership active. Certainly not a crushing amount of work, especially since I’ve been averaging 5 or 6 reviews a year for much less congenial outlets.  I’ve seen this from both sides now, since I was tapped to review a manuscript for PeerJ back in December. The first thing I liked is that they asked for the review back within 10 days. That’s just about right. I can see a thorough review taking three days (not working straight through, obviously, but taking time to carefully read, digest, look stuff up, and compose the review), and a busy academic maybe needing a week to find that kind of time. If one is too busy to get it done within 10 days, better to just be honest, say that, and decline the review. There is certainly no reason to let reviewers have manuscripts for four to six weeks, let alone the three to four months that was standard when I got into this business.  The second thing I liked is that they gave me the option to sign the review (which is almost always implicitly present, whether reviewers take advantage of it or not), and they gave the authors of the manuscript the option to publish my review alongside the paper. I lovethat. It means that, for the first time ever*, maybe the time and effort I put into the review will not disappear without a trace after I send it off. (It is astonishingly wasteful that we write these detailed technical critiques and then consign them to never be seen by any but a handful of people.) And it had a salutary effect on my reviewing. I always strive to be thoughtful and constructive in my reviews, but the knowledge that this review might be published for the world to see made me a lot more careful, both in what I said and how I said it. Hopefully, the authors I reviewed for will opt to publish my review, so you will be able to judge for yourself whether I succeeded–I’ll keep you posted on that... Naturally Mike and I took the maximum openness option and had our reviews and all the rest of the paper trail published alongside our paper, and I intend to do this every time from here on out. As far as I’m concerned, the benefits of open peer review massively outweigh those from anonymous peer review..."