Aries Systems Corporation

Recognizing Reviewers for their work is critical to the success of peer review and maintaining Reviewer talent. Each year, millions of hours are volunteered by researchers to conduct reviews for scholarly journals and pending manuscripts, often without formal acknowledgement for their time and effort. To bridge this gap, Aries Systems has partnered with several Reviewer recognition services to offer publishers using Editorial Manager® (EM) the opportunity to extend credit to their Reviewers for their contributions. Reviewer recognition services offered through EM include:

ORCID

ORCID (Open Researcher and Contributor ID) is a not-for-profit organization that issues free, unique identifiers to scholarly researchers. Editorial Manager users can connect their ORCID iD to their EM account and through the ORCID API, peer review activity in EM can be deposited to researchers’ ORCID records. To support blind peer review workflows, the data transferred does not include details of the individual manuscript and can be delayed (e.g monthly or quarterly) to help “mask” the exact date of the completed review. This provides a visible and verifiable way for journals to publicly credit reviewers, without compromising the confidentiality of the peer review process. For a walkthrough of this workflow and appropriate configuration options, watch the overview video.

ReviewerCredits

ReviewerCredits is an independent platform dedicated to certifying, measuring, and rewarding the activity of scientists as peer reviewers. Once Reviewer data is exported to ReviewerCredits from Editorial Manager, review activity will automatically be verified and recorded to researcher’s RC Index profile – which they can register for at no cost. Virtual credits are then assigned to each Reviewer, which can be redeemed for various benefits, such as discounted APCs, in the ReviewerCredits online store. In parallel, it reinforces a journal’s Reviewer network. ReviewerCredits also adds certified peer review activities to ORCID records, and imports peer review activity data from ORCID into the RC Index. Check out these resources for insights into EM configuration settings and how to create a journal profile on ReviewerCredits.

Publons

Publons is a free service that makes it easy for researchers to track and demonstrate their impact as Authors, Editors, and Reviewers – all in one place. Seamlessly integrated with EM, Publons can track and verify every review and editorial contribution on-the-fly. Peer review activity is automatically recorded to each Reviewers’ Publons profile (client’s Publons iD is required), and no sensitive information is displayed. Publons also offers journals the opportunity to access Reviewer demographic data, view additional candidate Reviewers, and track journal engagement. Watch the video for guidance on exporting data to Publons from Editorial Manager.

To ensure GDPR compliance, Reviewers must explicitly grant permission for their peer review activity data to be shared with any of these external platforms. Publishers can customize the Reviewer form in Editorial Manager to allow Reviewers to opt-in while submitting their review commentary within the system. Journal offices can schedule reports for export periodically, allowing data in EM to be transferred to these reviewer recognition services automatically without disrupting workflow.

Valuing Reviewers for their work creates a positive collaboration between Reviewers and journals and helps ensure that high-quality research is disseminated into the scholarly community. Each of the aforementioned recognition services are integrated with Editorial Manager and are available to all customers at no additional cost from Aries. For questions and configuration support, contact your Aries Account Coordinator.