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We are delighted to be working together with other scholarly publishers to maximize the efficiency of peer review, ensuring that key work related to COVID-19 is reviewed and published as quickly and openly as possible. Michael Markie talks more about this collaborative effort and encourages all those with expertise to review COVID-19 research to sign up to the rapid reviewer list.

Over the last few weeks great strides in open science have been — and are being — made to enable increased access to vital information. The COVID-19 pandemic has seen funders, publishers and the broader research community join in committing to ensure that research findings relevant to the COVID-19 pandemic are made open access and freely available as quickly as possible. The reason being, immediate access to robust and rigorous science is essential for informing clinical and public health responses in real time.

For the past two months, F1000Research has been prioritizing, expediting and openly publishing the latest COVID-19 research developments. Similarly, we have created dedicated COVID collections with our platform partners on Wellcome Open Research, AAS Open Research and soon for HRB Open Research. Our rapid publication times, open data and software policies, and transparent peer review process is ideally suited to meet the demands of ensuring the latest research is made publicly available without delay whilst going directly into a peer review track.

With the deluge of COVID-19 research happening globally, it is crucial for peer reviews to happen in a timely manner by experts who can validate and critique the research and give the wider community the confidence to reuse and build upon the latest work. However, many scientists working directly on COVID-19 are of course focused on the research itself and not necessarily available to meet the increasing demands of peer review during this pandemic. These researchers are currently being overburdened by the sheer number of requests to review articles. Measures are therefore needed to help ease the burden by allocating the peer review requests to a wider cohort of experts who have the expertise to support those who are struggling with the current demand.

To ensure that we can sufficiently support the rapid publication of robust COVID-19 research, we are very excited to be working in collaboration with eLife, FAIRsharing, Hindawi, PeerJ, PLOS, Royal Society, and Outbreak Science Rapid PREreview to maximize the efficiency of peer review, ensuring that key work related to COVID-19 is reviewed and published as quickly and openly as possible.

Our joint initiative is asking for volunteer reviewers with suitable expertise relevant to COVID-19, from all career stages and disciplines, to add their names to a “rapid reviewer list”. By doing so, these reviewers will be committing to rapid reviewing times, and an upfront agreement that their reviews and identity can be shared among participating publishers and journals, if submissions get rerouted for any reason.

Additionally, we are asking all potential peer reviewers, whether they sign up to the rapid reviewer list or not, to help identify and highlight important and crucial COVID-19 preprints as early as possible. This will help to optimize the limited time of expert reviewers, who are subsequently invited to review the most important and promising research by a journal/platform. The more rigorous and helpful review of preprints that can occur during this time, the better for all reviewers, authors, and editors.

Our call to the F1000 Research community is this: if you have the relevant expertise to review COVID-19 research, then please do sign up to the rapid reviewer list and make yourself available (upon request) to be invited to review COVID-19 articles. Your knowledge may be focused on methods, statistics, modelling or clinical trial expertise that is relevant but not exclusive to COVID-19. The aim is to reduce the pressure on the smaller core of expert reviewers with specific COVID-19 experience. We are encouraging reviewers across all disciplines, from the life and biomedical sciences, to computer science, public health, to social science. We also strongly encourage early career researchers to sign up too, and in the case of accepting a review request for F1000Research, you can work alongside a more senior colleague by using our co-reviewing functionality.

TO SIGN UP PLEASE FILL IN THIS SIMPLE FORM.