Publons Media Release: Another world first: pre-publication portfolios for peer reviewers

"For the first time ever, open access peer review platform Publons is giving researchers the ability to build a portfolio of their pre-publication peer review work, and journals the ability to validate the quality of their peer reviews. Says founder and CEO Dr Andrew Preston, 'We believe that peer review is a crucial part of the scientific process, and we want to do everything we can to help ensure peer review, and the reviewers who carry it out, get credit for the important work they do' ...  Until the new release, peer review at Publons was all post-publication and open access, allowing people to comment on, discuss and review papers already published in the academic literature. Reviews which are ‘endorsed’ on the site gain their own DOI, becoming citable objects in their own right - a world first.  With the update, however, reviewers can also record their pre-publication peer review work.  Pre-publication peer reviews will not, for the most part, be published. Instead, the existing types of pre-publication peer review - including closed, blind and double-blind - will be maintained. The difference is that reviewers will be able to show their activity in the academic community, and be given credit for it.  Additionally, Publons is providing academic journals the ability to ensure and show that all pre-publication peer reviews are validated. This will have two major benefits.  The first is that it will enable journals (both open access and subscription) to prove the quality of the peer reviews behind their published papers. This will help journals to fight off recent attacks they’ve had over their peer review quality, as seen in the recent Science sting, amongst others.  The second is that the pre-publication reviews will become an official part of researchers’ resumes, gaining extra weight in hiring and promotion decisions. At present, The MacDiarmid Institute has signed an agreement to begin considering the use of the Publons platform as the source of record for academic peer review reporting when used in hiring and promotion decisions. Other journals and institutions have expressed interest and further announcements are expected shortly ..."