Talk from Maria Chait - University College London, Ear Institute
Short abstract:
In 2021 we launched a process by which Registered Reports submitted on a preprint server could be edited, reviewed and accepted (or not: "recommended" or not in our terms), in a way free for authors, free for readers, and free for institutions, using Peer Community In (PCI). (PCI is funded by a number of universities.) As the resulting manuscript is not published by us as such, it can be published by a standard journal (should an author wish). 112 stage 1s and 32 Stage 2s have already been accepted at PCI RR, with the work of 102 recommenders. We have (so far) 33 "PCI Friendly" journals, i.e. those that guarantee to accept any paper we have recommended, bar some minor provisions (journal remit, APCs); PCI Friendly journals include Cortex and Royal Society Open Science. The author can thus choose at the end which journal they would prefer to publish in. We hope this novel approach to scientific publishing expands beyond the Registered Reports format (indeed, PCI Psychology is in the process of being set up). We have also introduced important innovations in the Registered Report process itself to deal with some weaknesses.