Once registered on the ScienceMatters platform, single observations and narrative preprints undergo crowdsourced, peer-to-peer review. Currently, at ScienceMatters, single observations are subject to triple-blind peer evaluation where authors, reviewers and editors are unaware of the identity of one another. Preprint narratives, on the other hand, will follow a two-step open peer review process. First, researchers in training evaluate the work and add their annotations, focusing mostly on technical details. We do this in collaboration with Hypothes.is, an online annotation tool for scholarly work. This is followed by a formal review of the annotated work by select experts in the field in question, who take the annotated comments into account when giving their rating and review. Whether triple-blind or fully transparent, as is the case for preprints, these methods ensure the review process is bias free and based on merit alone. More importantly, we make use of both crowdsourced wisdom and have reviewers in various time zones to get a faster, more accurate evaluation of the work, instead of being restricted to one or two reviewers, as is common practice.
Having the research available in the public domain:
a) Allows real time, scientific self correction as well as peer review of the research
b) Eliminates the hindering of scientific progress brought about by delays in scientific publishing.