Results of the First PeerJ Author Survey

We recently passed the six month mark for publishing PeerJ articles, and so we felt it would be a good time to take stock and conduct an Author Feedback Survey to see how we are doing.

On August 28th, a survey invitation was sent to every corresponding author who had received a first decision (of any type – including rejections) through August 27th 2013. We had a 51% response rate (132 respondents) which is very good for a survey of this nature. This group obviously included authors who had gone on to be published, and so that sub-set of authors answered some additional questions. Most questions provided a range of 5 answers and the survey closed on the 3rd September.

The headline finding is that 92% of responding authors rated their overall PeerJ experience as either “one of the best publishing experiences I have ever had” (42%) or “a good experience” (49%). We are terrifically proud of this response and thank those authors for this feedback!

Going further, 83% of authors intend to submit to us again (with 17% being a ‘maybe’ which largely depended on whether or not their future papers would be in our subject areas) and 94% of authors would recommend PeerJ to a colleague – again great responses.

Of those authors who had been published already, 98% rated their production experience as either “extremely good – one of the best I have experienced” (57%) or “good” (40%),

and when we asked them about the functionality of their online article, 87% rated the functionality as either “extremely functional – one of the best I have used” (38%) or “very functional”(49%).

As to the speed and effectiveness of the editorial process, 86% reported that their time to first decision was either “extremely fast” (29%) or “fast” (57%). Note: We are currently getting first decisions to authors in just 24 days.

We also encouraged free text feedback, which we will be digesting over the coming days and weeks. But from that feedback, here are some great quotes from Real Authors:

“Quick, cheap, open access, good HTML, XML and PDF, archived in all the important places, ditto for indexing — what’s not to like?”
“Fast, modern, innovative, attractive. I especially liked, for the first time ever, seeing my name in the copyright statement!”
“Editor was top notch, helpful, shared his opinions freely and really helped to improve our submission”
“PeerJ is quick, fast, and most importantly, human.”
“The open peer-review was a new and nice experience. Everything was fast and smooth. The final product is nice and elegant to the eyes.”
“I love the ease of submission, the transparent review process, the open access at affordable price, the speed and quality of the peer-review feedback and decision, and the sleek design of the article once it has been published.”
“The price, the open access, the open-review policy seem to me the way to move science forward.”
“I plan to send essentially all my future work to PeerJ, often initially as a preprint. Why? Why wouldn’t I? What do other journals offer that PeerJ doesn’t?”
“Both in philosophy and in my experience as an author, PeerJ seems to be embodying exactly the attitude and approach I believe all scientific journals should embrace.”
“I have successfully signed up several colleagues to PeerJ, and will continue to do so.”
“Anyone already publishing in or considering PLOS ONE should look at PeerJ.”

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So, all in all, we received some fantastic feedback from some of our earliest authors, and we thank them for taking the time to provide it. Of course, there is always room for improvement (we strive for everyone to have the best possible experience at PeerJ) but we believe that these results significantly out-perform any comparable journal.

Try the PeerJ publication experience for yourself – submit your work today!