• COMMENT

Unlock ways to share data on peer review

Journals, funders and scholars must work together to create an infrastructure to study peer review.
By
  1. Flaminio Squazzoni

    1. Flaminio Squazzoni is director of the BehaveLAB at the Department of Social and Political Sciences, University of Milan, Italy.

    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed  Google Scholar

  2. Petra Ahrweiler

    1. Petra Ahrweiler is a professor at the University of Mainz, Germany.

    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed  Google Scholar

  3. Tiago Barros

    1. Tiago Barros is a product lead at Publons, London, UK.

    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed  Google Scholar

  4. Federico Bianchi

    1. Federico Bianchi is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Brescia, Italy.

    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed  Google Scholar

  5. Aliaksandr Birukou

    1. Aliaksandr Birukou is editorial director, computer science at Springer Nature, Heidelberg, Germany.

    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed  Google Scholar

  6. Harry J. J. Blom

    1. Harry J. J. Blom is vice-president, publishing development, and head of the editorial department in astronomy at Springer Nature, New York, USA.

    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed  Google Scholar

  7. Giangiacomo Bravo

    1. Giangiacomo Bravo is a professor at the Linnaeus University, Växjö, Sweden.

    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed  Google Scholar

  8. Stephen Cowley

    1. Stephen Cowley is a professor at the University of Southern Denmark, Odense, Denmark.

    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed  Google Scholar

  9. Virginia Dignum

    1. Virginia Dignum is a professor at Umeå University, Sweden.

    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed  Google Scholar

  10. Pierpaolo Dondio

    1. Pierpaolo Dondio is a lecturer at the Technological University Dublin, Ireland

    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed  Google Scholar

  11. Francisco Grimaldo

    1. Francisco Grimaldo is vice-dean of the School of Engineering at the University of Valencia, Spain.

    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed  Google Scholar

  12. Lynsey Haire

    1. Lynsey Haire is head of electronic editorial systems at Taylor & Francis Group, Oxford, UK.

    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed  Google Scholar

  13. Jason Hoyt

    1. Jason Hoyt is co-founder and chief executive officer at PeerJ, London, UK.

    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed  Google Scholar

  14. Phil Hurst

    1. Phil Hurst is publisher at the Royal Society, London, UK.

    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed  Google Scholar

  15. Rachael Lammey

    1. Rachael Lammey is head of community outreach at Crossref, Oxford, UK.

    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed  Google Scholar

  16. Catriona MacCallum

    1. Catriona MacCallum is director of open science at Hindawi, London, UK.

    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed  Google Scholar

  17. Ana Marušić

    1. Ana Marušić is chair of the Department of Research in Biomedicine and Health at the University of Split School of Medicine, Croatia.

    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed  Google Scholar

  18. Bahar Mehmani

    1. Bahar Mehmani is reviewer experience lead in the Global Publishing Development Department at Elsevier, Amsterdam, the Netherlands

    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed  Google Scholar

  19. Hollydawn Murray

    1. Hollydawn Murray is data project lead at F1000 Research, London, UK.

    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed  Google Scholar

  20. Duncan Nicholas

    1. Duncan Nicholas is director of DN Journal Publishing Services, Brighton, UK.

    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed  Google Scholar

  21. Giorgio Pedrazzi

    1. Giorgio Pedrazzi is an assistant professor at the University of Brescia, Italy.

    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed  Google Scholar

  22. Iratxe Puebla

    1. Iratxe Puebla is senior managing editor at PLoS ONE, Cambridge, UK.

    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed  Google Scholar

  23. Peter Rodgers

    1. Peter Rodgers is features editor of e-Life, Cambridge, UK.

    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed  Google Scholar

  24. Tony Ross-Hellauer

    1. Tony Ross-Hellauer is a postdoctoral researcher at the Know-Center, Graz, Austria.

    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed  Google Scholar

  25. Marco Seeber

    1. Marco Seeber is an associate professor at the University of Agder, Kristiansand, Norway.

    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed  Google Scholar

  26. Kalpana Shankar

    1. Kalpana Shankar is a professor in the School of Information and Communication Studies, University College Dublin, Ireland.

    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed  Google Scholar

  27. Joris Van Rossum

    1. Joris Van Rossum is research data director at the International Association of STM Publishers, Oxford, UK.

    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed  Google Scholar

  28. Michael Willis

    1. Michael Willis is EMEA regional manager of peer review at Wiley, Oxford, UK.

    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed  Google Scholar

Cartoon of peer reviewers emerging from sealed tin handing their data to wise owls for analysis

Illustration by David Parkins

Access through your institution
Buy or subscribe

Peer review is the defining feature of scholarly communication. In a 2018 survey of more than 11,000 researchers, 98% said that they considered peer review important or extremely important for ensuring the quality and integrity of scholarly communication1. Indeed, now that the Internet and social media have assumed journals’ original role of dissemination, a journal’s main function is curation.

Access options

Access through your institution

Rent or buy this article

Prices vary by article type

from$1.95

to$39.95

Learn more

Prices may be subject to local taxes which are calculated during checkout

Nature 578, 512-514 (2020)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-020-00500-y

Authors A.B. and H.J.J.B. are employees of Springer Nature (which publishes Nature); Nature is editorially independent of its publisher.

References

  1. Publons. 2018 Global State of Peer Review (Clarivate Analytics, 2018).

    Google Scholar 

  2. Rennie, D. Nature 535, 31–33 (2018).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  3. Grimaldo, F., Marušić, A. & Squazzoni, F. PLoS ONE 13, e0193148 (2018).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  4. Polka, J. K., Kiley, R., Konforti, B. & Vale, R. D. Nature 560, 545–547 (2018).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  5. Teplitskiy, M., Acuna, D., Elamrani-Raoult, A., Körding, K. & Evans, J. K. Res. Policy 47, 1825–1841 (2018).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  6. Fox, C. W., Burns, C. S., Muncy, A. D. & Meyer, J. A. Funct. Ecol. 31, 270–280 (2017).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  7. Bravo, G., Grimaldo, F., López-Iñesta, E., Mehmani, B. & Squazzoni, F. Nature Commun. 10, 322 (2019).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  8. Squazzoni, F., Grimaldo, F. & Marušić, A. Nature 546, 352 (2017).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

Download references

Subjects

Latest on:

Nature Careers

Jobs

Nature Briefing

Sign up for the Nature Briefing newsletter — what matters in science, free to your inbox daily.

Get the most important science stories of the day, free in your inbox. Sign up for Nature Briefing