Publons was a commercial website that provided a free service for academics to track, verify, and showcase their

peer review Peer review is the evaluation of work by one or more people with similar competencies as the producers of the work (peers). It functions as a form of self-regulation by qualified members of a profession within the relevant field. Peer review ...

and editorial contributions for

academic journal An academic journal or scholarly journal is a periodical publication in which scholarship relating to a particular academic discipline is published. Academic journals serve as permanent and transparent forums for the presentation, scrutiny, and d ...

s. It was launched in 2012 and was bought by

Clarivate Clarivate Plc is a British-American Public company, publicly traded analytics company that operates a collection of subscription business model, subscription-based services, in the areas of bibliometrics and scientometrics; business intelligence, ...

in 2017. It claimed that over 3,000,000 researchers joined the site, adding more than one million reviews across 25,000 journals. In 2019,

ResearcherID ResearcherID is an identifying system for scientific authors. The system was introduced in January 2008 by Thomson Reuters Corporation. This unique identifier aims at solving the problem of author identification and correct attribution of work ...

was integrated with Publons. 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. Publons' business model was based on partnering with publishers.

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. 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 Clarivate Plc is a British-American publicly traded analytics company that operates a collection of subscription-based services, in the areas of bibliometrics and scientometrics; business / market intelligence, and competitive profiling for p ...

in 2017.

Services

Publons also provides: *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 Open access (OA) is a set of principles and a range of practices through which research outputs are distributed online, free of access charges or other barriers. With open access strictly defined (according to the 2001 definition), or libre op ...

following publication of the reviewed publication, though journals can choose to override this. Review content is shared using a

Creative Commons Creative Commons (CC) is an American non-profit organization and international network devoted to educational access and expanding the range of creative works available for others to build upon legally and to share. The organization has release ...

CC BY 4.0

license A license (or licence) is an official permission or permit to do, use, or own something (as well as the document of that permission or permit). A license is granted by a party (licensor) to another party (licensee) as an element of an agreeme ...

. Publons has partnerships with many publishers and with related services such as

Altmetric Altmetric, or altmetric.com, is a data science company that tracks where published research is mentioned online, and provides tools and services to institutions, publishers, researchers, funders and other organisations to monitor this activity, c ...

and

ORCID The ORCID (; Open Researcher and Contributor ID) is a nonproprietary alphanumeric code to uniquely identify authors and contributors of scholarly communication as well as ORCID's website and services to look up authors and their bibliographic ...

Publons Peer Review Awards

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

Reception

TechCrunch TechCrunch is an American online newspaper focusing on high tech and startup companies. It was founded in June 2005 by Archimedes Ventures, led by partners Michael Arrington and Keith Teare. In 2010, AOL acquired the company for approximately ...

remarked that lack of transparency leads to many problems in the publication process, and Publons purports to help with that. ''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. ''

Nature Nature, in the broadest sense, is the physics, physical world or universe. "Nature" can refer to the phenomenon, phenomena of the physical world, and also to life in general. The study of nature is a large, if not the only, part of science. ...

'' noted that peer review is an important job, and reported on the reactions of two of Publons's most prolific reviewers. Publons sends

unsolicited bulk email Email spam, also referred to as junk email, spam mail, or simply spam, is unsolicited messages sent in bulk by email (spamming). The name comes from a Monty Python sketch in which the name of the canned pork product Spam is ubiquitous, unavoida ...

to academics to advertise its service. This was cited by email service providers for being a violation of acceptable use policies.

References

External links