21 July 2021 – The Covid-19 pandemic has highlighted the perils and promises of preprints. The accelerated sharing of scientific findings through preprints played a key role in the scientific community’s response to the pandemic. In December of 2019, EMBO and ASAPbio created Review Commons, a platform for high-quality journal independent peer-review. A year and a half later, Review Commons has posted over 150 manuscripts as Refereed Preprints, with a median time-to-release of peer-reviewed work of just 71 days (as compared to 253 days for journal articles). Review Commons evaluates manuscripts before submission to a journal, and authors can then submit the resulting Refereed Preprint directly to one of our 17 affiliate journals. In the meantime, the authors can make their work public as a refereed preprint, together with reviewer comments and the authors’ response, dramatically accelerating the publication of peer-reviewed research.
Review Commons has now launched a blog, The Commons, dedicated to discussing innovations in scientific publishing and the platform’s policies. Refereed Preprints present an opportunity to analyse peer-review before and after it is incorporated into the editorial process of a journal. The Commons will take advantage of this to offer a detailed look at how a manuscript becomes a paper and the value added by reviewers and editors. One of the goals of Review Commons is to refocus peer-review on the scientific quality and significance of manuscripts, as opposed to the preferences and priorities of individual journals, and in The Commons we will examine if it is succeeding. The blog will also be a forum for authors, editors, and reviewers to share their experiences, suggestions, and criticisms.
Follow The Commons at https://www.reviewcommons.org/blog/
