JMIR Publications is pleased to announce their support of Publish Your Reviews, a new ASAPbio initiative encouraging reviewers to post their comments alongside the preprint versions of articles.
Publishing peer reviews alongside preprints provides readers with additional context on preprints, pointing out strengths, weaknesses, and open questions. It also enables reuse of reviews, thereby reducing burden on editors and reviewers. In addition, it brings scientific discussions into the public domain, catalyzing a culture of open scholarly debate. Finally, publishing peer reviews surfaces the work of reviewers to a broader audience, promoting greater recognition for this important work.
ASAPbio’s Vice President James Fraser has been posting review reports as a matter of lab policy for years. "As we continue to make science more open,” he said, “exposing the process of iteratively improving manuscripts through peer review is more important than ever. Writing constructive peer reviews takes time and effort - and should also be recognized as a scholarly output. Increasing transparency in peer review is timely and exciting."
Along with individual pledge signatories, Publish Your Reviews is pleased to have the support of several publishers, preprint servers, peer review platforms, funders, and related organizations.
"Since JMIR Publications' founding in 1999, peer reviewers have been acknowledged at the end of a published manuscript by name to promote transparency and an open peer review process,” said Gunther Eysenbach, Founder and CEO of JMIR Publications. “JMIRx-Med, the first preprint overlay journal indexed in PubMed and PubMed Central, has been using open peer review since its inception in 2019, and collaborating with partners like PREreview and PeerRef, to provide innovative open peer review processes.”
Publish Your Reviews invites all researchers interested in promoting more open dialog around preprints to sign the following pledge:
When a journal invites me to review an article that is available as a preprint, I will publish my review alongside the preprint. I will make sure that the published version of my review does not include the journal name, a recommendation for publication, or other confidential information.
To learn more and sign the pledge, visit publishyourreviews.org.
About ASAPbio
ASAPbio is a scientist-driven nonprofit working to promote innovation and transparency in the life sciences. Publish Your Reviews is an initiative led by ASAPbio to encourage peer reviewers to publish their reviews alongside the preprint of an article.
About JMIR Publications
JMIR Publications is a leading, born-digital, open access publisher of 30+ academic journals and other innovative scientific communication products that focus on the intersection of health, and technology. Its flagship journal, the Journal of Medical Internet Research, is the leading digital health journal globally in content breadth and visibility, and is the largest journal in the medical informatics field.