Transferable Peer Review Pilot Launched For Wiley Neuroscience Journals

“Peer review is an essential cornerstone for scientific publishing, where rigorous scrutiny results in high quality research,” said Philip Carpenter, Vice President and Managing Director, Research Communications, Wiley. “As an example of the best traditional practices evolving to fit the needs of 21st century researchers, we believe this enhanced system will save authors, reviewers and editors valuable time and significantly increase the publication speed of many papers.”

Across the publishing industry traditional peer review takes an average of 80 days per paper*. Research articles submitted to Wiley journals are reviewed by at least two suitably qualified experts before an editor makes a decision to publish based on the reviews provided.

If a paper is rejected from the author’s first choice journal the entire process is repeated upon resubmission, sometimes with the same reviewers. To make this process more efficient, Wiley has developed a system to preserve and transfer the initial peer review, enabling the review to travel with the article between journals on its route to publication.

This enhanced system of transferable peer review will be piloted amongst nine of Wiley’s high impact neuroscience titles. The journals will use their usual review format, with the addition of a standard scorecard that will be used by all other participating journals. If, following a rejection, a manuscript is submitted to a second journal, the author will have the option to transfer the review and the paper’s scorecard. Authors will have the opportunity to revise their manuscript according to review comments prior to transfer and resubmission.

“The Journal of Comparative Neurology (JCN) is pleased to participate in the transferable peer review pilot program. The ability to transfer papers with their reviews in a seamless manner will increase the efficiency of the peer review system by reducing the burden on reviewers, while helping editors to make prompt decisions. This will result in faster outcomes for authors and improved editorial turn-around time,” said Dr. Patrick Hof, JCN Editor-in-Chief, of Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, U.S.A. “We believe this will substantially enhance the peer review system and are looking forward to feedback from authors and reviewers during the pilot phase of the development.”

The pilot will run for at least six months and results will be used to develop a robust process which can be expanded across Wiley’s journal portfolio. Wiley journals that also participate in the Neuroscience Peer Review Consortium will continue to participate in that program.