Is PEERS free?
Yes, PEERS is (and always will be) free, for everyone: communities, readers, reviewers and authors.
How is PEERS funded?
One of the main preoccupations of the founders of PEERS was to understand how current market logics structure the research produced and how we can free ourselves from them. We came to the unsurprising conclusion that research should be as detached as possible from financial considerations and that recent technological advances should allow something along the lines of approaches such as Wikipedia. We explain this reasonning in our manifesto.
peers.press
Academic research clearly has not yet taken full advantage of the digital era and of social networks, and we have a possibility at shaping the future we want for our community. If we think of how we a...
PEERS is a non-profit association initiated and supported by academics.
PEERS is developed in order to optimize its operating cost, our goal is, after the first development phase, to achieve a storage of one million items for 10 euros per month. These storage savings would allow PEERS to survive on a minimal amount of funds, and to be maintained by a team of researchers who carry out this project as part of their academic activity, with the support of several institutional and philanthropic partners.
Finally, aside from PEERS.PRESS the non-profit association also develops tools in a project called PEERS LAB. These tools are free for students and academics and sold to businesses.
If you want to support PEERS as an individual or institution, please contact us here.
Publishing
What are the publishing licences on PEERS?
When publishing on PEERS authors can choose between several open access licences.
Can I publish a paper on PEERS and then submit it to a traditional journal?
You have the possibility to submit your work to a traditional journal as you can do with any pre-print, for example under the same conditions as you would do with a pre-published paper on HAL, ArXiv or SSRN. There are many differences between PEERS and existing pre-print sites (open review system, integrated specialised word processing, generation of a quality .pdf, integration into collections etc.) but none of these differences prevent PEERS from taking advantage of current pre-print practices. Please make sure to know the editorial policy of the journal regarding pre-prints.
Can I update or delete my publication?
Yes, the authors retain full control of their publications, and can modify or delete their publication at any time. We invite you to use the versioning system to modify your publication while allowing readers to access previous versions, but you are under no obligation to do so.
Can I publish on PEERS an archived version of a work that has already appeared in a traditional journal?
Yes, as PEERS is a non-profit platform, it is possible to self-archive your publications by following the self-archiving rules in force in your country. Several resources, such as this website exist to inform you about the right to self-archiving of your work.
You may also publish on PEERS a paper already published in an online repository, or publish in an online repository a paper already published on PEERS.
Can I publish anonymous work on PEERS?
Yes. To prevent abuse and undisclosed conflicts of interrests, we are currently developping a third party verification system so that one can publish anonymously under the liability of an editor.
An anonymous author is also able to reveal their name in a later version of a published work.
Reviewing
How does open review work?
Every PEERS user has access to an review toolbox which allows them to approve a work, and to identify questionable points and errors. This toolbox is designed specifically for jobs with a data analysis component, as readers have access to data and data analysis tools to allow for easier and more thorough evaluation than is possible with the current publishing system.
Authors can respond to reviews and/or propose a new version of their paper.
Collections may require a number of positive reviews before including a piece of writing in their collection.
Is open review anonymous?
The reviewers decide, for each section of their review, whether they wish to reveal their identity.
The communities will post in their "evaluation process" whether and how they consider anonymous evaluations.
To prevent abuse and undisclosed conflicts of interrests, we are currently developping a third party verification system so that one only can publish anonymously under the liability of an editor.
Curating
What is a community?
A "community" is a network of researchers with common interests, which may take the form of collections (collections are our equivalent of "journals") or joint research projects. A PEERS community can be founded by any group of academics: a laboratory, a research group, a more or less formal network, a learned society or a working group within it.
How to create a journal on PEERS?
You can create a new journal or a PEERS version of an existing journal by creating a "collection". Any author or community can create a collection of written, audio, and video works, either as a periodical or in permanent form (conference proceedings, book collection, reading list, syllabus, or other). Collections can include works published on PEERS as weel as external links.
Other
What is your moderation policy?
PEERS is based on ex-post evaluation and ranking: a publication on PEERS is not "worth" anything in itself and does not "say" anything in itself, only reviews and inclusions into collections say something about the value of the published work.
So, for the time being, we have decided to adopt the widest possible policy and to allow the publication of any work that is not in violation of French law. When an incident should lead us to have to define a more precise policy, the PEERS advising committee will take the necessary steps in discussion with the community.
PEERS should integrate (this idea) on the site!
We are very happy with the many feedbacks we have already received since the first reveal of the PEERS prototype in novembre 2018k and we have put in place a roadmap to collect user ideas. Feel free to consult it, vote, comment on existing ideas or suggest new ones!
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You can report any difficulties in the dialog box at the bottom left of your screen.
I am interested in contributing to this project .
Do not hesitate to contact us.
peers.press
PEERS is a nonprofit editing platform built from a joint initiative of scholars of epistemology, metaknowledge and critical theory