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Peer review can be a confusing process at times and so to help cut out all the jargon and make it as simple as possible, we have developed the ‘Peer Review Experts’ blog series. Each week we’ll be bringing you top tips on a wide range of peer review subjects, straight from the experts; our very own peer-review team at F1000Research. This week, Jeniffer Jeyakumar and Charlie Vickers, Senior Editorial Assistants at F1000Research, are discussing the importance of getting credit.

We know that writing a peer review report can take a lot of time and effort, especially amongst all your other work, and so you should gain credit where credit is due! After all, peer review (and science as a whole) depends upon researchers doing a lot of intellectual heavy lifting for the benefit of their discipline and so why shouldn’t this be formally recognized in some way? Well, the good news is you can get credit for your peer reviews thanks to the open science movement.

The future is open

Historically, peer review has been performed blind (the authors do not know who reviewed their article), or even double-blind, where authors and reviewers do not know each other’s identities. This is generally associated with the more traditional journals, which have relied on Editorial Boards and closed peer review for years. However, with the rise of the internet, academic articles no longer need to be physically printed and online journals and publishing platforms are becoming much more common. This in turn has fueled the rise of open-access journals and consequently, open peer review. 

Open peer review has several different meanings and a quick online search will show that the science community has yet to agree upon a definition. In some cases, this means publishing peer review reports alongside the article, such as eLife or The EMBO Journal, sometimes with the names of the reviewers and sometimes without. Others allow authors to decide whether this information is published, or to opt out of having their names published alongside their peer review report. 

At F1000Research we take the meaning of open one step further with our author-led, post-publication model of open peer review – this means that both the full peer review report and the names of the reviewers are published alongside the article, together with the authors’ responses. This pioneering method of peer review not only encourages a transparent and constructive dialogue between authors and reviewers, but also means that reviews are discoverable and citable, therefore enabling researchers to get the credit they deserve for all their hard work.

How to get the credit you deserve

With more traditional methods of peer review, it can be hard to demonstrate your experience of reviewing, or the number of papers you’ve reviewed. Our model of open peer review offers reviewers several ways to claim credit for the work you put into your peer review report, as outlined below:  

• F1000Research operates a fully transparent peer review process whereby your report is published alongside your full name and affiliation allowing both the readers and authors to acknowledge your contribution.
  
• On the right-hand side panel of your peer review report, you can see how many times your report has been viewed.
  
• Your report is assigned a Digital Object Identifier (often referred to as DOI) when it’s published, making it easily citeable by other researchers.
  
• Your review can be added to your ORCID by simply linking your F1000Research account to your ORCID account. This will mean that reviews that you write for us will be automatically uploaded to ORCID for you. At F1000Research we encourage supervisors to co-sign with junior researchers to not only provide a valuable training tool in peer review, but to grant junior researchers the credibility and visibility they deserve.

Credit should be an integral part of the peer-review process, so the next time you review for us, make sure you take every opportunity to gain credit for all your hard work!

“I believe that claiming credit for a peer review is an essential part to the transparency and quality of articles being accepted into an academic journal. As an early career researcher, peer co-reviewing allows me to critically appraise articles while also to collaborate ideas with another reviewer in the field. Co-reviewing allows for a more systematic way of evaluating articles, and contributes to the experiential learning of researchers such as myself.” Robinson Truong, HBSc, MSc Candidate, Centre for Urban Health Solutions, Li Ka Shing Knowledge Institute – St. Michael’s Hospital

If you’re interested in reviewing for F1000Research and would like to know more please click the following link for our reviewer guidelines: https://f1000research.com/for-referees/guidelines.