A brief review of peer review in DMM in 2019

During 2019, Disease Models & Mechanisms (DMM) partnered with Publons to trial their Reviewer Recognition tool, giving reviewers formal recognition of their peer review contributions. Reviewers can now choose to add their DMM review to their Publons profile when completing the reviewer form (via an automated process). The profile can then be used in job, visa and grant applications, complete with verified review activities. Since the tool's launch, more than 40% of DMM's reviewers have taken up this option (data from Publons) and we hope that more will do so.DMM is excited to be an affiliate journal for Review Commons, a new platform for high-quality journal-independent peer review in the life sciences. Reviewers will be asked to focus on the science rather than fit for a journal. DMM Editors have agreed to consider articles and their transferred reviews without soliciting additional reviews (although additional expert advice might be necessary on occasion). We look forward to receiving submissions from the Review Commons platform.Following a successful trial, DMM now operates a system of cross-referee commenting, to help resolve differences between referees, identify unnecessary or unreasonable requests, or – conversely – highlight valid concerns raised by one referee but overlooked by others. Happily, average speeds to decision and acceptance have not been affected by this change.The Company of Biologists and DMM strive to support the academic community by engaging a broad and diverse array of authors, reviewers, Editors, editorial staff, editorial board members and readers in their activities. DMM encourages authors and Editors to consider diversity in career stage, geographical location, gender and ethnicity when suggesting and selecting appropriate reviewers for a manuscript. This was prompted, in part, by a gender analysis conducted across The Company of Biologists' journals (see Box 1). More recently, the issue of ghost writing of peer reviews by junior researchers was highlighted. For early-career scientists to be involved in the peer review process, DMM requires that there must be a genuine mentoring process and that the senior invited reviewer should always take final responsibility for the report delivered to DMM. The name of the co-reviewer must be reported to the Editor; a field is provided in the report form for this purpose. The names of these co-reviewers are also included in our annual published list of reviewers (see Supplementary Information). We thank every one of them for their expertise and time, as well as our authors, readers and Editors for their support.

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