Peer review is the evaluation of work by one or more people with similar competences as the producers of the work (peers). It functions as a form of self-regulation by qualified members of a profession within the relevant field. Peer review methods are used to maintain quality standards, improve performance, and provide credibility. In academiascholarly peer review is often used to determine an academic paper‘s suitability for publication.

From Wikipedia, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peer_review

Preprints and peer review

The preprint manuscript is the author’s version of an article and usually submitted to a journal for peer review. Traditionally, the editorial board of the journal is responsible for the coordination of the review process.

Peer review systems vary between anonymous or ‘blind’, double-blind and open peer review and depend on whether or not the author and reviewer know about each other’s identity or not and if the review report is publicly available or only to the editorial board of a journal and the author.

Today, various forms of peer review exist some of which we present here. Some of our partners provide services that either includes or provide digital infrastructure for text annotation and peer review of your manuscript.

To receive or give feedback to preprints hosted on the AfricArXiv platform we suggest the following options:

Receive updates and join our discussions around Peer Review through the AfricArXiv community:

Go to prereview.org/communities/africarxiv

Community review articles on PREreview

PREreview’s mission is to bring more diversity to scholarly peer review by supporting and empowering community of researchers, particularly those at early stages of their career (ECRs) to review preprints.

At PREreview we believe all researchers should be allowed to help others by reviewing the work of their peers, as long as it is done constructively.

To train researchers to provide constructive feedback
Paradoxically, while peer review is a key component for scientific dissemination, very few scientists receive any formal training in it.

Read more at content.prereview.org/about/

Publicly review any article on ScienceOpen

ScienceOpen is a discovery platform with interactive features for scholars to enhance their research in the open, make an impact, and receive credit for it. 

Provide or receive a formal peer review on any of the more than 60 Million research articles and online records on the ScienceOpen platform. Read more at about.scienceopen.com/peer-review-guidelines/.

Via the AfricaArXiv Preprints collection on ScienceOpen it is possible for authors to ask other researchers to provide a standardized peer review on the preprint manuscript directly on the ScienceOpen platform. Read more at scienceopen.com/collection/SOPreprints

Annotate preprint manuscripts with Hypothes.is

The browser app and bookmarklet Hypothes.is enables sentence-level note-taking or critique on top of news, blogs, scientific articles, books, terms of service, ballot initiatives, legislation and more.
Sometimes referred to as ‘community peer review’ you can read and annotate accepted preprint manuscripts on any of our partner platforms using Hypothes.is – either for yourself or make your annotations public to other Hypothes.is users.
OSF Preprints including AfricArXiv/OSF and other community preprint services integrate with Hypothes.is to make public highlights and annotations readable on the PDF to anyone.

Read more at help.osf.io/…Annotate-a-Preprint and web.hypothes.is/research/.

Submit your preprint manuscript to PeerCommunityIn

Peer Community in … (PCI) is a non-profit scientific organization based in France that aims to create specific communities of researchers reviewing and recommending, for free, unpublished preprints in their field.
PCI provides a free recommendation process of scientific preprints (and published articles) based on peer reviews.

  • Submit the preprint to a PCI for review (howto).
  • PCI recommenders have 20 days to decide on your preprint.
  • Once taken in charge by a recommender, your preprint is peer-reviewed by at least two reviewers.
  • You receive the reviewer and the recommender comments in order to prepare the revised version of your preprint.
  • PCI provides a template to the author to prepare the final version of the article with PCI logos and the reference of the recommendation.
  • The recommendation and the review reports are published on the PCI website. The pdf version of the PCI recommendation and the review reports can be archived by the author as supplementary material.
  • PCI recommendations of the preprint receive a Crossref DOI which is linked to the preprint online record.
  • Update your preprint record on the AfricArXiv platform including the PCI recommendation.
  • The recommended preprint can still be submitted to a journal. Read more at peercommunityin.org/pci-friendly-journals.

Ethical Guidelines for Peer Review

To ensure the integrity of scholarly records and to facilitate consistent, fair and timely reviews, we recommend following the COPE Council guidelines for peer reviewers, which can be accessed at  publicationethics.org/files/Ethical_Guidelines_For_Peer_Reviewers.pdf

To receive public acknowledgment for review assignments you can

  1. upload the review report to AfricArXiv after publication of the reviewed work by the authors.
    • add the DOI of the published article as reference
    • make sure that journal editors and authors agree
  2. register the review at publons.com.

In case of any questions on the community-driven peer review options for preprint manuscripts contact us at info@africarxiv.org.

References

COPE Council. Ethical guidelines for peer reviewers. September 2017. | publicationethics.org

Tennant, J.P., Ross-Hellauer, T. The limitations to our understanding of peer review. Res Integr Peer Rev5, 6 (2020). doi.org/10.1186/s41073-020-00092