peer review

The Evolution of Peer Review and the Role of Editors: Thoughts from Nature Communications’ Editor in Chief

Peer Review

To help us understand more about peer review, the role that editors play, and how accountability and transparency promote ethics and integrity in the process, we invited Nature Communications’ Editor in Chief, Elisa De Ranieri, to share her thoughts with us. How has the peer review process evolved over time? Peer review as the main vehicle for assessing the integrity of research output is a less established practice than commonly thought – for example, it was only in the 1970’s that it became the norm at Nature. In any case, it is now a cornerstone of scientific publishing and as … Read more…

What Partnering With Publons Will Mean for Peer Review at Springer Nature

The burden on the peer review community is increasing as the volume of published research articles grows. To help address this, Springer Nature and Publons, part of Clarivate Analytics, have announced a partnership to improve the peer review process and enable peer reviewers to receive recognition for their contribution. Find out more from Alison Mitchell, Managing Director, Journals, Springer Nature.  1. What are the benefits to researchers from this new partnership? Finding reviewers is one of the slowest parts of the publication workflow and this is reflected in authors’ satisfaction over journals’ time to publish their work – the Publons partnership … Read more…

The Springer Nature Review Experience

Peer review is a necessary and sometimes time-consuming job that is essential to the research process. As a peer reviewer, you take time away from your own research, daily workload, and personal life to provide feedback on papers written by your peers. At Springer Nature we are constantly working towards creating a better review process, and the best way to do that is to hear what our authors think about the review process we offer. Read on below for insights from our author satisfaction survey on peer review, including some of the many insightful comments we receive from authors. View … Read more…

Researching Peer Review with Springer Nature

We’re sharing articles from research published in Springer Nature journals that explore the topic of peer review. Read articles below for free thanks to the SharedIt links provided. In this two part paper from the Journal of Digital Imaging, Bruce I. Reiner examines how to redefine the practice of peer review through intelligent automation. If properly implemented, this peer review model could result in creation of a standardized referenceable peer review database which could further assist in customizable education, technology refinement, and implementation of real-time context and user-specific decision support. Read more from: Redefining the Practice of Peer Review Through … Read more…

How Publishers Can Help Drive Diversity & Inclusion in Peer Review

If journal editors often rely on their own networks of contacts to recruit peer reviewers, then could diversity in editorial boards help improve diversity and inclusion in peer reviewers? As the pool of researchers becomes more diverse (in all dimensions, including in race, gender, geography, culture), there is a pressing need for a more varied pool of peers to review their work. Journal editors and editorial board members often begin their search for reviewers from their own contacts—their own personal networks. Following from this—could increasing diversity in editors and editorial boards help drive diversity in peer review? How can a … Read more…

Service Spotlight: In Review

In Review is a new way to open up the submissions and peer review process. Learn more about this new service, which will allow you more insight than ever before into your manuscript’s editorial progress. Amye Kenall, Global Head of Life Sciences, Open Research at Springer Nature shares more. What exactly is In Review? Powered by Research Square, In Review offers authors a personal dashboard to easily track the status of their manuscript, and the opportunity to share it with the wider community earlier in the submission and peer review process. Who can utilize In Review? In the first instance, … Read more…

Building Your Peer Reviewer Target List

There are many jobs to juggle as an editor running a successful journal – everything from soliciting articles, building a strong board, and navigating publishing ethics. This month we’re highlighting the various components of running a journal, with an eye on providing tips and advice. Read all available posts in the series here. Finding quality peer reviewers is an essential task of managing a successful journal. Ideally, over time, you will create a pool of reviewers that you can rely on time and time again for thorough and accurate reviews. Building that resource can seem like a daunting task to … Read more…

Peer Review Week 2017: Transparency in Review, and other innovations

By Steven Inchcoombe, Chief Publishing Officer, Springer Nature At Springer Nature every week is Peer Review Week. Each week our dedicated in-house editorial staff spend thousands of hours co-ordinating the process of peer review, to ensure and improve the quality of the scientific literature we publish and in doing so, advance discovery. We support our Editors in Chief, Editorial Board Members, Section Editors, peer reviewers and authors by providing guidance and systems to enable them to improve manuscripts. Furthermore, we’re trialling innovative new practices through small-scale pilots, while also exploring grander ideas such as the potential role of Artificial Intelligence. … Read more…

Paying it forward with Peer Review

As part of the Peer Review Week 2017 we speak to Senior Editor Annett Buettner about the Filter of Hope initiative, which donates a water filter for each peer review completed in the Springer journal Environmental Earth Sciences. Q) How did you come up with this idea? It was over a beer, sometime in 2014, where some colleagues quite informally talked about peer reviewers and the fact that we needed to reward them in some way for the work that they do. We wanted an easy-to-implement, ethical and financially feasible solution and got thinking after that evening. Finally it was … Read more…

Transparency in Peer Review: Conference Proceedings

The Peer Review Week 2017 celebrates the importance of peer review in maintaining the quality and accuracy of science. Today we shed light on the Peer Review process in Conference Proceedings. Written by Aliaksandr Birukou Conference Proceedings can be a great format for publishing important and valuable research and communicating new results much faster than journals. Did you know that conference proceedings are not just a simple compilation of conference papers but also go through rigorous, often-times a stricter peer review process? Let’s look at an example. The proceedings of the 18th International Conference on Agile Software Development, XP 2017, … Read more…