Three publications

PeerJ

Articles   Editors   Author instructions

PeerJ is an Open Access, peer-reviewed, scholarly journal. It considers and publishes Research Articles in the Biological, Medical and Environmental Sciences. It aims for rapid decision making and will publish articles as soon as they are ready.

PeerJ selects articles based only on a determination of scientific and methodological soundness, not on subjective determinations of 'impact,' 'novelty' or 'interest.' It applies the highest standards to everything it does - specifically, the publication places an emphasis on research integrity; high ethical standards; constructive peer-review; exemplary production quality; and leading edge online functionality.

All content in PeerJ, PeerJ Computer Science, and PeerJ Preprints is published using a Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY).

Learn more about where the journals are indexed and the impact factor.

View our key milestones and events over the last half decade:

5 Years of PeerJ publishing

PeerJ Computer Science

Articles   Editors   Author instructions

As with the flagship biology and medical journal, PeerJ Computer Science is designed to select articles based on their scientific soundness only. It is both robustly peer-reviewed and Open access. More about this new journal can be found on the PeerJ Computer Science homepage.

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Both PeerJ and PeerJ Computer Science operate a 'membership' model in addition to the traditional article processing charge (APC). The low-cost memberships give researchers rights to publish with us (for free). Unless paying via the APC route, all authors on a paper must have a 'paid membership' and there are 3 membership levels, each conferring different rights. The three memberships are: Basic (which allows for publishing once per year); Enhanced (which allows for publishing twice per year); and Premium (which allows for publishing up to five articles per year). Each membership also includes other benefits as laid out on the pricing page.

Authors submit for free and can pay for a membership or Article Processing Charge (APC) at any point in time. However, by the time of publication all Authors must possess a paid membership or have paid an APC. 'No questions asked' waivers are available for authors from certain countries. Editorial decisions are made by independent Academic Editors based on the merits of each submission - in no way does the membership or APC status affect editorial decisions.

PeerJ and PeerJ Computer Science can accept submissions directly, or alternately via PeerJ Preprints. Papers can be of unlimited extent, contain unlimited color images, and can include supplementary materials, however surcharges do apply for substantially long manuscripts (email for more information). We encourage Open Peer-Review - specifically, reviewers are encouraged to identify themselves when submitting their reviews; and authors are given the option to post the full peer-review history of their submission alongside their published article (a policy which has been successfully pioneered by The EMBO Journal).

PeerJ Preprints

Articles   Advisory Group   Author instructions

PeerJ Preprints is the 'pre-print' area of PeerJ. Similar to pre-print servers that already exist (for example arXiv.org), authors can submit draft, incomplete, or final versions of articles they are working on. By using this service, authors establish precedent; they can solicit feedback; and they can work on revisions of their manuscript. Once they are ready, they can submit their pre-print article into PeerJ (although it is not a requirement to do so).

PeerJ Preprints only accepts submissions in the same subject areas as PeerJ (Biological, Medical and Environmental Sciences) and PeerJ Computer Science. In order to submit to PeerJ Preprints, at least the submitting author must have a user account with PeerJ. There is no pre-publication peer-review of submissions; however we do perform basic checks to ensure conformity with our policies. Submissions are made using the same platform as with the peer-reviewed journals, although some of the requirements are less stringent. Articles are not typeset, but we do provide automated conversion into PDF.

The default is for a PeerJ Preprints publication to be fully open to all viewers (what we call a 'public' pre-print).

All plans, including free plans, are able to publish unlimited public preprints.

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Read about the launch of PeerJ Preprints in our blog, and read about the history of preprints in this guest blog post on Scientific American.

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