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On the 14th of September we will be anouncing the winner of the 2017 ALPSP Awards for Innovation in Publishing, sponsored by MPS Limited at the 10th Anniversary ALPSP Conference. 

In this series of posts leading up to the Awards ceremony we meet our six finalists and get to know a bit more about them.  

First up, we speak to Andrew Preston, Co-Founder and Managing Director of Publons. 

 

Tell us a bit about your company

 

Publons is the home of peer review. Our

cross-publisher platform collects peer review activity, providing researchers

with a verified record of all of their reviewing contributions. Publons makes

it possible to:

 

 

●    

Recognise the contributions of

reviewers worldwide

 

●    

Improve and expand the reviewer

pool through our free online training course

 

●    

Gain novel insights into global

peer review and researcher behaviour

 

●    

Find, screen, contract, and

motivate reviewers (an important part of an editor's job)

 

 

All of these threads feed into our mission to

speed up research through the power of peer review.

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What is the project that you

submitted for the Awards?

 

We submitted the Publons reviewer recognition

service. This is essentially what you find on Publons.com and comprises of a

free offering for researchers and a paid service for publishers.

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Tell us more about how it works

and the team behind it

 

Researchers sign up to create a free account.

Publons then makes it really easy to import, verify, and store a record of

every peer review they've performed and every manuscript they've handled as an

editor, across any journal in the world. Researchers also have access to personal

statistics and a downloadable, verified review record, which provides evidence

of their service and standing in their field.

 

 

 

Records can be added regardless of whether the

manuscript goes on to be published. Publons works with researchers and journals

to set policies about what information can be displayed publicly. We support

all review policies, ranging from completely open to double-blind, and we also

enable post-publication review.

 

 

 

 

Partner journals are able to add Publons to

their peer review workflow. Every time a researcher reviews for one of our

1,350 partner journals they are able to opt in to have their review seamlessly

added to their Publons record. Researchers love this, making it really easy for

a publisher to provide an enhanced service to reviewers.

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Why do you think it demonstrates

publishing innovation?

 

Peer review is at the heart of the research

ecosystem. We rely on it to validate findings, evaluate their importance, and

to flag issues in the publication. When peer review suffers, so does the

quality, pace, and public perception of research.

 

 

Publons is the first platform to bring some

transparency to the peer review process. It took significant technical

innovation to develop the infrastructure to handle the peer review policy and

editorial management system for really any journal in the world. The scale of uptake -- 180,000 reviewers and

1,350 journals from many of the top publishers in the world -- highlights the

importance of the market need we're filling.

 

https://www.blogger.com/null What are you plans for the future?

 

Publons was recently acquired by Clarivate

Analytics. Together, as a trusted neutral player in the market, we believe we

can tackle the challenge of bringing trust and efficiency to peer review at

scale. We plan to expand our offering to make it even easier for researchers to

get recognition for their work and for publishers to have a deeper

understanding of researcher workload and expertise.

Right now though we are preparing for Peer Review Week - a global event celebrating the essential role that peer review plays in maintaining scientific quality and looking forward to finding out who the winners of the Publons Peer Review Awards are too.

 

 

Publons Co-Founders - Andrew Preston (right) & Daniel Johnston  Photo by: Image Service,Victoria University of  Wellington

Andrew Preston is the co-founder and Managing Director

of Publons. He was an active researcher in physics, first as a PhD student at

Victoria University of Wellington, then as postdoctoral researcher at Boston

University. He founded Publons with a mission to speed up research by improving

peer review. Publons recognises reviewers for their work and -- with more than

170,000 researchers and over 1,350 partner journals -- is the world’s largest

peer review platform. Publons was acquired by Clarivate Analytics in June 2017. 

Website: www.publons.com

 

Twitter: @arhpreston @publons  
Facebook: facebook.com/publons
Publons: https://publons.com/author/1/andrew-preston

LinkedIn: http://nz.linkedin.com/in/arhpreston/

See the ALPSP Awards for Innovation in Publishing Finalists lightning sessions at our Annual Conference on 13-15 September, where the winners will be announced. 

The ALPSP Awards for Innovation in Publishing 2017 are sponsored by MPS Ltd.