blog

A key aim of the F1000Research approach to publishing is to clean up the peer review process – referees are still invited but this is done after publication (to remove the normal holdups in when the science is shared) and is done completely in the open (with names and referee reports published alongside the article). Open peer review has the added benefit of enabling referees to finally get credit for the not insignificant time and effort required in reviewing the article and writing the report.

At F1000Research, we have therefore been working on ways to help researchers get the credit they deserve for this work.  We have recently added DOIs (digital object identifiers) to all our referee reports so that the reports are now fully citable, and we have also added view counts to each report.

We are now working with ORCID, Consortia Advancing Standards in Research Administration Information (CASRAI), and others to work out the best way to include the referee reports as a formal output in an ORCID profile.

Laura Paglione (Technical Director, ORCID) and I are co-chairing a participant-funded standards project, facilitated by CASRAI, to look at all types of Peer Review Services Contributions, from journal peer review to conference and grant peer review. The project includes a wide range of contributors from Autism Speaks, Denison University, Cambridge University Press, American Geophysical Union, Origin Editorial, University of Split and Hypothes.is.

Key areas of discussion include assessing ‘prior art’, identifying and defining data elements to enable acknowledgement, and recommending citation structure. Draft recommendations are due to be submitted to an external review circle in June, prior to finalization of the report. CASRAI will then translate these recommendations into fully defined record-types, fields and classifications for inclusion in the CASRAI dictionary so they can be openly used by the broader community.  Meanwhile, ORCID will use the recommendations to develop methods for linking review activities with ORCID identifiers and for posting review metadata to the ORCID Registry.  If you are interested in joining the Review Circle for this project, then please contact info@casrai.org.

If there are other features you would like us to consider developing to help support our referees and recognize their contributions then do let us know.