Good day! This is PLUTO team.
Publishing a paper in a journal is the most prominent way for researchers to be recognized their academic achievements. The core process of this recognition by the academia is the peer review.
Peer review is an evaluation system that referee scholarly manuscripts (article, paper, grant application, etc.) of author by researchers in the same academic field. Peer review has played a key role in academic publishing over the last few decades, and most journals use it for quality control. In journals, generally, main purpose of peer review is to referee the feasibility, importance, novelty, and etc. of research achievement with the aid of peer researchers, and the editor makes decision on whether to accept a paper based on this.
Today, we are going to talk about the problems of peer review in the current journal systems, and the new peer review system that PLUTO propose to solve these problems.
Problem with traditional peer review system
Traditional publication process in journal
Peer review used by most journals is single-blind that ensures the anonymity of only the reviewer, and double-blind that ensures the anonymity of both the author and reviewers. They have the advantage that reviewers can freely criticize without being pressured or disturbed when evaluating and the differentiation factor is reduced. However, since today’s academic disciplines are subdivided and academic society is closely linked, anonymity can not be fully ensured even if there is no direct contact between authors and reviewers, so resulting in an environment where authors and reviewers can act unethically was created. In other words, the core value of blind peer review, the objectivity and fairness of the problem is missing.
Not only anonymity but also non-disclosure review is creating problem of objectivity, reliability and consistency in judgment. In fact, in past research, eight out of twelve papers were rejected as defects when resubmitted to the same journal. (Peters & Ceci) These discrepancy shows that false and error can not prevent entry into the academic literature, which means that peer review is not playing a role. The rapid increase in the number of recently withdrawn publications is largely due to the problem of peer review.
The problem of publishing bias and delays arises in journals because peer review is conducted after editor’s preliminary verification. For example, Only research achievements that consistent with trend-appropriate research, positive results or traditional theories can be published, and this is a big problem that hinders the development of academic. In addition, in most journals, paper referee takes an average of three months, which is largely due to peer review delays. Editors have difficulty in finding reviewers for peer review, and even if they find reviewers, the feedback is only passively.
The reason that traditional peer review is not performed well is the absence of motivation is a big part. Peer reviewers perform as volunteer, so do not receive incentives for contribution at all. Recently, academia has become an issue about whether peer review should be undertaken as an obligation to scholarly or needs incentives for contribution.
PLUTO’s peer review system
PLUTO proposes a new peer review system to facilitate academic discussion and enhance quality assurance and transparency in research achievements. Peer review system in p the atform is based on public peer review model where all participants in PLUTO can participate in evaluation at any time, and the process is transparently disclosed and recorded.
The features of the peer review of PLUTO are summarized as follows.
Open identity: Though the review on PLUTO basically uses a double-blind review model, all the records are disclosed after certain conditions are met. It removes the possibility of malicious actions behind anonymity.
Community Participation: It is a public review that any registered user with their identification verified can participate in the evaluation. Rather than being a simple “wisdom of crowd”, public review on PLUTO is more like “wisdom of reputation”. Quantitative evaluations are weighted by the reputation of the reviewer. Also the voluntary participation of the community makes review process much faster since the intermediary role of editors in selecting reviewers is removed.
Open review : All reviews will be posted publicly with the paper and accessible to anyone.This can improve the transparency of review process and increase confidence in the paper. Also disclosure of these reviews create open interactions, enabling active communication between author and reviewer or between reviewers. Thus, the review itself provides useful information, and based on this, readers can judge the paper.
Motivation: Reviewers are motivated by reasonable incentives for contribution with tokens and reputation. This not only speeds up the process, but also gives review a sense of responsibility. A reasonable incentives for contributions will increase the true value of the peer review.
Quantification: The public peer review will make quantitative evaluation scores on research articles. Quantitative evaluation is given in N separate items such as originality, influence, scientific validity, and is calculated as an average of all quantitative evaluations it receives, weighted by the reputation of each reviewer. Qualitative evaluation given in text supports the review process by making rationales on the quantitative scores, suggesting ways to improve the article, and evaluating the aspects that can’t be expressed in numbers.
Reasonable Cost: All papers shared on the platform will undergo a peer review process and are automatically published. The only cost of publishing on PLUTO is the tokens provided to fellow researchers who have peer-reviewed the article. The amount of tokens to pay is set by the author which of course can be zero, and reviewers will determine which articles to review by themselves.
Beyond supplementing existing peer review, PLUTO challenges to take root a new system. Team thinks that this new system will improve and standardize the entire process of evaluating and publishing academic information, and believes that it will help accelerate the development of academia as peer review process itself will advance to a higher level.
All of the process is being designed in a way such that academics are relieved from the centralized structure of current publishers, and benefit researchers and the research community. Currently, team is constantly thinking and improving process to prevent potential abuse issues. The designs are subject to change, and we’ll share it through our social channels.
If you have a good idea on this, please provide feedback anytime.
Thank you.