PeerRef joins Plan P community as a trusted partner in delivering rapid peer review of preprints, increasing the speed and rigor of emerging scientific research.

(Toronto, April 19, 2022) JMIR Publications have signed an agreement with PeerRef to help facilitate Plan P’s mission for rapid, rigorous peer review of preprints. Under this agreement, PeerRef will offer review of preprints uploaded to medRxiv and bioRxiv to provide a quick path to publication in JMIRx overlay journals, for example JMIRx-Med, which is the worlds first preprint server overlay journal indexed in PubMed and PubMedcentral, or any other JMIR or Plan P partner journal. PeerRef is one of the growing numbers of Plan P’s peer-review service (PRS) partners.

This partnership aligns with one of Plan P’s core missions: Encouraging open science by promoting rapid review of Preprints before submission to a journal, and supporting innovators in peer review and dissemination of science by integrating these tools to build a better scholarly communications landscape. Researchers and students who have a Plan P membership can request peer-reviews of their preprints by adding the hashtag #planp to their preprint abstract, and can specifically target peer-review communities using specific hashtags (e.g. #planp #peerref to indicate a “submission” to PeerRef),

PeerRef uses advanced AI-based and semantic search tools to match preprints with the most relevant reviewers, who return decisions based on the merit of a work’s methodology and conclusions (ie, is the piece sound science). Reviewers are asked to provide comments using a streamlined template that expedites the review process and ensures the appropriate criteria are addressed.

Authors are then encouraged to make revisions based on the reviewer recommendations and are able to receive a portable, collated peer review report once the final version of the preprint is confirmed.

This agreement comes on the back of extensive vetting of PeerRef’s services, with the platform consistently returning thoughtful and constructive reviews compatible with JMIR’s high standards. Of note, all reviews returned through PeerRef are checked for non-constructive language.

Elliott Lumb, Founder of PeerRef, says:

“We are deeply passionate about creating a better process for scientific review. The opportunity to work with Plan P is unmissable and we’re thrilled to provide expertise that can help drive this mission.”

This service presents a critical component of the Plan P framework, bringing rigorous review to emerging research and ensuring the scientific record is as responsive and robust as possible. In the age of COVID, the speed of scientific discovery has accelerated with an increasing number of preprints that make tenuous or unsupported claims making their way into the public consciousness – peer review of these problematic preprints is an excellent means to achieve balance in the pace and veracity of research.

Gunther Eysenbach, CEO of JMIR Publications, says:

“PeerRef have demonstrated the ability to leverage technology to deliver rapid, trusted reviews of preprints. I am delighted to call them an early partner in JMIR’s vision for a more equitable and transparent science ecosystem - this is just the beginning.”

Plan P is a bold play to revolutionize publishing, encouraging transparency through preprints and publication of methodologies for all research projects. Auxiliary author services, such as PeerRef and PREreview, enrich the author's experience and highlight the important work done to improve research outside of the conventional pathways. JMIR is actively seeking partners for collaboration on Plan P - this includes peer-review services, journals, preprint journal clubs.

Plan P is offering institutional, departmental, and individual memberships to academic institutions, departments, funders, and individual researchers that enable them to receive a rapid peer-review of a preprint from a Plan P partner journal or from an independent peer-review service like PeerRef. As multisided platform and matchmaker sitting between preprint servers, peer-review services, and journals, Plan P offers a true transformation to open access and open science, while supporting traditional journals and journal publication pathways. For publishers, Plan P is providing tools to supplement traditional manuscript submission workflows with an editorial prospecting platform.

Contact for membership and partnership inquiries: https://planp.science/contact-us

About JMIR Publications

JMIR Publications is a leading, born-digital, open access publisher of 30+ academic journals and other innovative scientific communication products that focus on the intersection of health, and technology. Its flagship journal, the Journal of Medical Internet Research, is the leading digital health journal globally in content breadth and visibility, and is the largest journal in the medical informatics field.

About Plan P

Plan P is a service and multisided platform designed to help research departments, institutions and funders to achieve open access and rapid peer-review and publication of preprints without author mandates or transformative agreements, by reimagining the submission, publication, peer-review and journal curation workflows. For publishers and journals, Plan P provides an editorial prospecting platform helping journal editors to identify high-quality preprints.

About PeerRef

PeerRef is a journal-independent open peer review service. Using AI and open-source software, it organizes peer review for preprint authors in all fields of research. It provides researchers with review reports, from expert researchers, to improve and verify their work. PeerRef is a simple, open, low-cost solution to peer review.

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2021