Introduction
Publons is a social networking website for researchers to share and discuss peer review of academic publications. It was launched in 2012 and is now the world’s largest independent repository of peer review information, containing reviews from 970 different journals.
Background
Publons was founded by Andrew Preston and Daniel Johnston to address the difficulties in publishing peer reviewed literature [1]. The Publons name is an homage to the "publon", the "minimum unit of publishable material". Highly rated reviews receive DOIs, similar to Figshare.
Reception
TechCrunch remarked that lack of transparency leads to many problems in the publication process, and Publons purports to help with that [2]. ResearchInformation noted that while the site supports both pre- and post-publication review, not all reviews are published in deference to existing publication norms [3].
Other information
Relative to Academia.edu and ResearchGate, Publons focuses entirely on peer review.
- ^ Preston, Andrew R.H.; Johnston, Daniel. "Publon #1: The Future of Academic Research". Figshare. Retrieved 5 September 2014.
- ^ Shu, Catherine. "Academic Startup Publons Gives Peer Reviewers Credit For Their Work". Techcrunch. Retrieved 5 September 2014.
- ^ Harris, Sian. "Tracking and Validating Reviews". Reasearch Informaiton. Europa Science Limited. Retrieved 5 September 2014.