Two premier library publications review PeerJ

We were pleased to see that PeerJ was reviewed by two leading library publications over the last few weeks – the Charleston Advisor and the Library Journal. Both publications rated PeerJ very highly, and so we would like to share some of their observations.

In the Jan 2014 issue of the Charleston Advisor (one of the premier library publications in which academic librarians review relevant products), reviewer Michael Hughes delved into PeerJ. Read the full review here (PDF provided with the kind permission of the Charleston Advisor).

Michael gave PeerJ 4 1/4 stars (out of 5) and had the following to say about us:

“PeerJ’s responsive Web design compacts gracefully when resized, and it looks great on mobile devices. An attractive cover photo dominates the front page, and above it a navigation bar and search field link to the major sections of the Web site”

“PeerJ is a handsome journal and easy to browse. The simple but effective search engine highlights key words in results, and the fuzzy search worked well against the typos I threw at it.”

“Another notable contribution is the author’s profile page. Authors can elect to upload a picture, describe their work details, or link to personal and related Web sites. But the real attraction is what PeerJ calls academic contribution, a score that authors earn based on their activity across the journal.”

“If PeerJ is the publisher’s premiere attraction, the second of its products deserves special mention. The PeerJ Preprints server is a repository of “living” articles similar to arXiv, the preprint server in physics.”

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And in the Dec 2013 issue of the Library Journal (the “most trusted and respected publication for the library community”), Bonnie Swoger also reviewed PeerJ (scroll halfway down). She had this to say about us:

“PeerJ has worked hard to break with print publishing traditions. It is one of a few online journals I have seen that show that it was born digital. The homepage feels similar to news sites such as Slate.com or The Daily Beast, prominently featuring pictures, artwork, and figures from recently published items.”

“One quick link often pulls up the complete review history for the paper, including initial reviews, editor’s comments, and reviewer comments after revision. This makes PeerJ an excellent tool for teaching students about the peer-review process.”

“While the journal charges author fees like many other open access publications, its membership model is a groundbreaking experiment in scientific publishing. Instead of charging a flat fee per accepted article, PeerJ asks each author to pay for lifetime membership (with some exceptions, such as for undergraduate students).”

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We thank both reviewers for their great reviews, and we encourage you to check out PeerJ for yourself! We would like to end with this quote from Michael Hughes in the Charleston Advisor:

“By electing to publish in journals like PeerJ, authors apply a measure of competitive pressure against journals that charge steeper fees to make articles Open Access. That alone is reason to anticipate PeerJ’s next 200 papers.”

We couldn’t agree more.

A large number of institutions have now signed up with PeerJ to centrally fund the publication plans for their faculty. If you are a librarian, or if you would like your institution to get involved, then learn more, and contact us via this page: https://peerj.com/pricing/institutions/