Taylor & Francis Pilots Research Square’s ‘Research Quality Evaluation Service’ to help Accelerate Peer Review

Taylor & Francis has announced it is trialing the Research Quality Evaluation Service from Research Square to help find qualified peer reviewers more quickly.

With growing numbers of article submissions and increasing competing demands on researchers, finding suitable reviewers in a timely manner is recognized as a significant challenge across scholarly publishing. This can delay new research from reaching the world and realizing its potential to foster progress. To help tackle this problem, Taylor & Francis is exploring a range of processes and services that support journal editors and maintain the integrity of the peer review process.

This new pilot service, being introduced to a small number of Taylor & Francis titles, will be used where a journal is unable to find sufficient peer reviewers within a reasonable timeframe. The experienced team at Research Square will then match the papers with suitable available reviewers, ensuring journal editors soon have a full set of reports to inform their decisions.

As is standard for the Research Square service, peer reviewers will receive a small honorarium for reviews that are returned on time. This will be paid regardless of whether their report is positive or negative. Paying researchers to review has both supporters and detractors but Taylor & Francis is committed to evidence-based discussion of the topic, to which the findings of this pilot will contribute.

Research Square confirms all reviewers are active researchers of appropriate seniority and checks the quality of every reviewer report. Robust screening processes are also in place to prevent researchers with competing interests or a record of research misconduct from being invited to review.

Rebecca Furlong, Head of Reviewer Programmes at Taylor & Francis, said, “We are seeing more papers being submitted than ever before, which means that finding reviewers with both the time and appropriate expertise to review a paper can sometimes be challenging. Good science involves scrutiny by expert peers, and for that reason we are exploring many options to make sure peer review works effectively and efficiently for the needs of today’s researchers. We’re looking forward to seeing how well the service offered by Research Square supplements the existing reviewer-finding tools and support available to Taylor & Francis editors.”