Lower Costs, Faster Publishing Benefits of New Peer Review Service from U of G Scientists

Editorial bias, publication delays and prohibitive publishing costs are among a growing list of complaints levelled by researchers against the ages-old peer review process used by many scientific journals.  

Helping authors worldwide avoid these and other problems is the goal of a new peer review service launched by University of Guelph biologists Dr. Terry Van Raay, a professor in the Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology, and Dr. Andreas Heyland, Department of Integrative Biology, both within the College of Biological Science. 

Peer Premier, incorporated as a private company in 2021, is intended to effectively separate the peer review process from journals and their publishers. The venture is the first-ever professional peer review service intended to be independent of any journal or publisher.  

The service offers a new way to conduct critical peer scrutiny of papers intended for research journals while bypassing several major hurdles that the U of G researchers – and others – say have become endemic in academic publishing.  

“The vast majority of scientists recognize various problems in the current publications system,” said Van Raay. CONTINUE READING