The chemistry journal Synlett, published by Thieme, has trialled a new system of peer review that allows a crowd of 100 approved researchers to comment on manuscripts online.
Similar online approaches, such as post-publication peer review sites that allow people to comment on papers, are becoming increasingly popular, but these can attract comments from any anonymous members of the public which can potentially be abusive or unconstructive. The Synlett team believes their system - which they call intelligent crowd reviewing - captures the best of both worlds.
The crowd consists of 100 hand-picked reviewers based on recommendations from the editorial board, as well as researchers who volunteered to take part. The reviewers can access a secure, bespoke online platform and view papers being considered for publication. They can annotate and comment on manuscripts, as well as respond to comments left by others.
As with traditional peer review, comments are anonymous. The journal’s editor in chief, Benjamin List thinks this is important, and it sets the Synlett platform apart from similar systems such as F1000 Research, where the identities of reviewers for online papers are not kept a secret.
The journal trialled the platform throughout 2016 and it was a success, with each uploaded manuscript attracting dozens of comments from the crowd within a matter of days. The comments and discussions were of sufficient quality to allow the journal's editors to make editorial decisions in a fraction of the time it normally take to organise peer review.
The platform was trialled with 10 manuscripts, but the journal now wants to expand this with the ultimate aim of handling all their papers in this way. They say the intelligent crowd based approach could also work for other journals or even other processes involving peer review such as grant applications.
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