Shortening peer review at medical journals from months to weeks.
Submissions to medical journals keep rising, and finding a reviewer who will accept and deliver on time has become the hardest part of an editor's job. Peerclave gives a journal a standing panel of subspecialty reviewers who have chosen to work with it. For each manuscript the editor sets a fee and a deadline; a panel reviewer accepts or declines, and is paid on submitting a complete review by the deadline.
The problem
The volume of scientific literature has grown by roughly 4% a year for decades. The number of researchers willing to review it without payment has not kept up. The 2018 Global State of Peer Review report found that by 2017 an editor sent an average of 2.7 review invitations for every review completed, that more than half of all invitations were declined, and that the agreement rate had fallen from 0.54 in 2013 to 0.44 in 2017 — with the figure projected to reach 3.6 invitations per review by 2025.
The work also sits with a few people. An analysis of biomedical peer review found that 20% of reviewers carried out between 69% and 94% of all reviews. Those are the reviewers editors most want and least often reach.
The result is delay. A study of journals in one clinical field put the median time to a first peer-reviewed decision at about two months and to a final decision at over six. Much of that time is spent not on the review itself but on finding someone to do it.
Peerclave does not add reviewers to the general pool. It gives a journal a smaller group of reviewers who have applied to work with it, are paid per manuscript, and accept a deadline before they start.
How it works
A reviewer applies to a journal's panel
A journal never sees a reviewer who has not applied to it.
The journal sends a manuscript
To a panel reviewer, with a fee and a deadline set for that manuscript.
The reviewer gets the manuscript
On acceptance, at the access level the editor set: abstract first, or full text.
The review is submitted
Complete against the structured format, by the deadline.
Payment is released
On submission of a complete review. One revision round is included.
For editors and for reviewers
For editors
A journal builds a panel from the reviewers who apply to it. For each manuscript the editor picks a panel reviewer and sets the fee, the deadline, and how much of the manuscript the reviewer sees before accepting. One round of revision review is included.
Editor access is by application. Peerclave is a network of recognised journals, not an open service.
For reviewers
Sign in with an email code, fill in a reviewer profile, and apply to the journals you want to review for. A journal sees you only when you apply to it, and decides whether to add you to its panel.
Once you are on a panel, its editors send you manuscripts, each with a fee and a deadline you accept or decline. You are paid on submitting a complete review by the deadline, whatever conclusion it reaches.
Integrity
Reviews follow a structured format, so completeness can be checked rather than argued. Where a journal and a reviewer disagree about whether a review is complete, Peerclave decides. A journal cannot withhold payment on its own.