Publons

Publons was a commercial website that provided a free service for academics to track, verify, and showcase their peer review and editorial contributions for academic journals. It was launched in 2012 and was bought by Clarivate in 2017. It claimed that over 3,000,000 researchers joined the site, adding more than one million reviews across 25,000 journals.^[1][2][3] In 2019, ResearcherID was integrated with Publons.^[4]

Publons

Available in	English
Owner	Clarivate
URL	publons.com
Commercial	Yes
Registration	Required
Users	3,000,000
Launched	2012
Current status	Website began redirecting to Web of Science on 18 August 2022

Publons produced a verified record of a person's review and editorial activity for journals, which could be downloaded to include in CVs, funding and job applications, and promotion and performance evaluations.^[5] Publons' business model was based on partnering with publishers.^[6]

Background

Publons was founded by Andrew Preston and Daniel Johnston to address the static state of peer-reviewing practices in academic research publishing, in view of encouraging collaboration and speeding scientific development.^[7] The Publons name was an homage to the "publon", the "minimum unit of publishable material". The company was registered in New Zealand and had an office in London, UK. It was acquired by Clarivate Analytics in 2017.^[8]

Services

Publons also provides:^{[citation needed]}

• tools for publishers to find, screen, contact, and motivate peer reviewers;
• data and publications about global peer review behaviour;
• peer review training for early-career researchers; and
• features for academics to discuss and evaluate published research

Reviewers can choose whether or not to make the content of their reviews open access following publication of the reviewed publication, though journals can choose to override this. Review content is shared using a Creative Commons CC BY 4.0 license. Publons has partnerships with many publishers^[9] and with related services such as Altmetric^{[citation needed]} and ORCID.^{[citation needed]}

Publons Peer Review Awards

Publons Peer Review Awards^[10] are recognitions for top peer reviewers and editors. Publons' Awards started in 2016.^[11] In 2017 an award program called the Sentinel Award was added, for outstanding advocacy, innovation or contribution to scholarly peer review.^[12]

Reception

TechCrunch remarked that lack of transparency leads to many problems in the publication process, and Publons purports to help with that.^[13] Research Information noted that while the site supports both pre- and post-publication review, not all reviews are published, in deference to existing publication norms.^[14] Nature noted that peer review is an important job, and reported on the reactions of two of Publons's most prolific reviewers.^[15]

Publons sends unsolicited bulk email to academics to advertise its service. This was cited by email service providers for being a violation of acceptable use policies.^[16]

See also

• Web of Science
• Journal club
• JournalReview.org
• Peerage of Science
• PubPeer

References

1. Ravindran, Sandeep (2016-02-08). "Getting credit for peer review". Science. American Association for the Advancement of Science. Retrieved 2016-09-15.
2. Spence, Paul: "Wellington startups that stayed up", in Idealog, 15 September 2016
3. "Publons New Index Reveals Who is Doing Lion's Share of Peer Review". 3 October 2017.
4. "Your ResearcherID of Web of Science moved to Publons". Wageningen University & Research. 2019-04-24. Retrieved 2021-12-06.
5. Curry, Stephen (2017-06-01). "Peer review is essential to good science – it's time to credit expert reviewers". The Guardian. Retrieved 2017-11-01.
6. "What is Publons' business model? : Publons". publons.freshdesk.com. Retrieved 2018-02-15.
7. Preston, Andrew; Johnston, Daniel (2013). "The Future of Academic Research". doi:10.6084/m9.figshare.871466. {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)  
8. Page, Benedicte. "Clarivate Analytics buys Publons". The Bookseller. Retrieved 2017-11-01.
9. "Journals and Conferences". Publons. Retrieved 2022-01-19.
10. "Publons' global Peer Review Awards 2018".
11. "Meet the world's top peer reviewer". Stat News. Retrieved 2017-11-01.
12. "Time to open the curtains on peer review". Nature Index. Retrieved 2017-11-01.
13. Shu, Catherine. "Academic Startup Publons Gives Peer Reviewers Credit For Their Work". Techcrunch. Retrieved 5 September 2014.
14. Harris, Sian. "Tracking and Validating Reviews". Research Information. Europa Science Limited. Retrieved 2014-09-05.
15. van Noorden, Richard (2014). "The scientists who get credit for peer review". Nature. Nature Publishing Group. doi:10.1038/nature.2014.16102. S2CID 211836365. Retrieved 2014-10-09.
16. "ScientificSpam DNSBL on Twitter". Twitter. Retrieved 2016-02-24.

External links

• Official website