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“Painful”. That was the one-word answer from a researcher when I asked about her experiences over many years with the general publishing process, regardless of journal or publisher. Painful to submit, painful to share data, painful to decipher what reviewers and editors are asking of them when they receive contradicting comments, etc.

Our author-led model ensures that they can decide who has the most appropriate level of expertise to review their work

That was not the first or last time I’d had that response. The process of getting findings published and shared as fast as possible proves to be frustrating due to many hurdles beyond an authors control. Having a manuscript selected for peer review is the first part of the hurdle. The next step where many manuscripts get ‘stuck’ is during the peer review process, which can take from weeks to many months.

This is why over four years ago at F1000Research, we gave control back to the authors. Our author-led model ensures that they can decide who has the most appropriate level of expertise to review their work, they decide when to revise – this can mean choosing to address a reviewer’s concerns before further reports are received, and they decide if and how the data and figures should be updated.

In addition, we offer a more transparent system for selecting reviewers, as authors suggest reviewers and the F1000Research team checks that they meet our suitability criteria – are not close collaborators, no discernible or undeclared competing interests, suitable subject expertise etc. Importantly, readers can also see who has reviewed any given article.

To help authors, we’ve also developed a tool that analyses the submission and generates a short-list of potential reviewers based on the content of the article.

Why did the system need to change?

There have been long-standing concerns about lack of transparency around editorial decisions and the peer review process, which ultimately leads to publication bias. Peer review itself is often described as being “broken”. Single-blind, double-blind, collaborative, open, post-publication – there have been numerous models introduced for the peer review process, but all with limitations.

So, if we accept that peer review is flawed, but necessary, which way do we turn?

For us, it’s open peer review in a format that brings full transparency to the peer review process from submission to publication and beyond, i.e., subsequent versions of the article. There are different levels of open peer review, but at F1000Research we implement a fully open process, i.e. where both the reviewers name and affiliations are published, as well as their reports and declaration of competing interests. This post-publication author-led invited open peer review process is, in our opinion, the best way to address the problems around lack of transparency.

Give credit where it’s due

This process opens up the path for reviewers and authors to have a frank but constructive discussion about the article

When it comes to open peer review, our emphasis is not just on facilitating transparency in the process, but also on crediting the reviewer for the efforts they have put into appraising a piece of scientific work. Signing their name, and having their report count as a citable piece of scientific discourse goes some way to providing reviewers with personal and practical credit.

Their reports are permanently attached to the article in HTML and PDF formats, and the reviewer retains the copyright of their report under the CC-BY license. In addition, the report is given a DOI that can be linked to their ORCID profile, and the reviewer reports are also available alongside the article when it is indexed in PubMed Central (for an example, scroll down to the end of this article by Sean Ekins et al in F1000Research and PubMed Central). In this sense, the reviewer comments become a permanent part of the article itself.

This process opens up the path for reviewers and authors to have a frank but constructive discussion about the article, even before it has been indexed in PubMed. Importantly, this model transforms the role of the referees from guiding an Editor to make a publishing decision on the article, to instead helping the authors improve the article. At the same time, it provides valuable context and critique for the readers, which is a level of insight that is simply not available at most journals.

Checks and balances

Giving back control doesn’t mean losing unbiased quality control. As a member of COPE, F1000Research conducts numerous editorial checks on all submissions prior to publication to ensure that high publishing and ethical standards are maintained.

As I explained above, all selected reviewers are subject to our suitability checks, and are invited by the F1000Research team, on behalf of the authors, if these criteria are met. Like most other journals, our reviewer selection criteria emphasizes that they need to be subject or methods experts of the article they are reviewing, and that they can be deemed to be impartial. If any competing interests exist, then reviewers are asked to declare this.

The future of post-publication author-led invited open peer review

We believe our author-led post publication invited peer review model will have an important impact on the wider long-term goals of medical and life sciences research

Open peer review itself is gaining more recognition, and we believe our author-led post publication invited peer review model will have an important impact on the wider long-term goals of medical and life sciences research. The level of transparency and service to the research community, by facilitating rapid publication and author-led peer review, is steadily being recognized as a promising evolution of standard peer-review and journal processes. Recently, this has been recognized by the Wellcome Trust who have set up the Wellcome Open Research platform using this model (and powered by F1000) for their grantees to publish anything they wish to publish.

We remain ready to adapt the process as needed, and to expand this model to other disciplines, so that dissemination of findings can be shared quickly and transparently across all fields of scientific and humanities research.