Available in English Users 100,000 Current status Online | Website publons.com Launched 2012 | |
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Publons is a website and free service for researchers to share, discuss and receive credit for peer review and editing of academic publications. It was launched in 2012 and by 2016 more than 100,000 researchers have joined the site. Publons's mission is to "speed up science by making peer review faster, more efficient, and more effective". Reviewers can choose whether or not to make the content of their review open access following publication of the reviewed publication, though member journals can choose to override this. Review content is shared using a Creative Commons CC BY 4.0 license. It has partnerships with major publishers such as BMJ, SAGE and Wiley, and with related services such as Altmetric and ORCID.
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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 is an homage to the "publon", the "minimum unit of publishable material". The company is registered in New Zealand.
Reception
TechCrunch remarked that lack of transparency leads to many problems in the publication process, and Publons purports to help with that. ResearchInformation noted that while the site supports both pre- and post-publication review, not all reviews are published in deference to existing publication norms. Nature noted that peer review is an important job, and reports on the reactions of two of Publons's most prolific reviewers.
Publons reaches out to new prospective reviewers through unsolicited bulk email to addresses retrieved from archives of scientific journals such as PubMed and has been terminated by at least four email service providers for sending spam in violation of acceptable use policies.