Organizer
Kathleen Shearer and Paul Walk, COAR; Herbert Van de Somple, DANS; Martin Klein, Los Alamos National Lab along with several other partners from the repository, preprint and peer review services
Website or social media links
Current stage of development
Ready to be implemented
Project duration
2 years
Update
Since the kickoff, it was affirmed that the model we have developed is applicable to a large number of the use cases that were presented at the ASAPbio sprint, and has reinforced to us the timeliness of our effort to develop a standard technical approach to bi-directional communications between preprint services (and other types of repositories) and peer review services, that can scale beyond individual initiatives.
How has your project changed?
The kickoff presented us with several new use cases and workflows that could be supported using our model, as well as a number of potential new partners that may be interested in helping to develop a reference implementation for the model. A standard approach to linking peer reviews and preprint servers using linked data notifications could be used to communicate a wide range of information between these and other services such as “request for review”, “under review”, “new version of preprint uploaded”, and so on.
Have you integrated any feedback received?
We are documenting any new use cases that have arisen to ensure that our model can be implemented in a variety of different contexts to support different domains, different platforms, and different approaches to peer review. It is clear that many of the other proposals presented at the sprint could use the technologies we are developing and that implementation of a standardized approach would allow peer review services to thrive in an environment where they are able to connect with content housed in a diverse network of repositories and preprint servers.
Have you started any collaborations?
We already have a number of partners amongst the current participants who have indicated their interest in piloting the model in the context of their own services. However, external funding will be needed to support the implementation of technologies into these different services.
Project aims
Background information on current practices
Currently there are some peer review overlay services that have a relationship with specific preprint servers, but these initiatives do not use standard protocols, are platform specific, and do not have a bidirectional relationship with the repositories/preprint servers. So, for example, users who go directly to the preprint server to read an article are not made aware that there are reviews in the review services.
Through this project, we intend to enhance the visibility and usability of preprint reviews and scale current efforts by developing standard protocols that are platform agnostic and can be adopted in a common way in a distributed network of content providers (preprint servers, repositories, etc.) and peer review service providers.
Overview of the challenge to overcome
The most important challenge we are addressing is the lack of web standards-based interoperability across peer review services and preprint services / repositories.
The ideal outcome or output of the project
We are proposing to develop a standard approach that will link peer reviews from different review services with the research outputs housed in the distributed network of preprint servers, archives, and repositories. This approach will be generalizable beyond peer review and preprints and enable linking between any type of content and overlay service.
Description of the intervention
This project brings together several partners from different countries and domains that will implement and pilot the protocols, workflows, technologies and taxonomies that support bi-directional communication and linking between any compliant repository or preprint platform to communicate with any compliant peer review service. We will pursue the adoption of the appropriate technologies in several repositories (Harvard Library/DASH, HAL, COS preprint servers), and existing overlay services (PREreview, Peer Community In, Episciences) and work with research communities to provide feedback and testing in several domains.
Plan for monitoring project outcome
The project will be centrally coordinated by COAR which will liaise with partners, support technical implementation, monitor and resolve issues, and document standards, taxonomies and workflows.
What’s needed for success
Additional technology development
A first technology exploration to support these functionalities has led to a prototype, described in this COAR document, Modelling Overlay Peer Review Processes with Linked Data Notifications and some of the workflows and vocabularies are being developed through various other initiatives such as F1000, Peer review taxonomy, DocMaps and several of the partners participating in this project.
Feedback, beta testing, collaboration, endorsement
This project will focus on implementation of technologies in the context of several partners representing participating repositories/preprints and peer review services, and undertake beta testing to develop standard protocols, technologies, workflows, and vocabularies
Funding
Funding is needed to coordinate the work, undertake the required development in the peer review services and preprint/repository platforms, pilot and refine the interactions between services, and document the outcomes.
2 Comments