Transpose is a community database of journal policies on peer review and preprinting developed with major contributions from ASAPbio. Launched almost a year ago after a sprint at the 2018 Scholarly Communications Institute, Transpose includes information on whether peer review is blinded, transparency of reviewer identities and reports, co-reviewing policies, versions of papers that can be preprinted, and citation and media policies surrounding preprints. The database holds over 3,000 journal records contributed by publishers and individual community members, and all information is released under a CC0 waiver and is available for reuse.
Thus, we’re thrilled that Clarivate’s Master Journal List, a “tool to help you to find the right journal for your needs across multiple indices,” is now displaying Transpose information. The inclusion of these data in the Master Journal List signals growing recognition of the importance of transparency in journal policies for authors.


The list also integrates information from topfactor.org, a project of the Center for Open Science that catalogs journals’ implementation of the TOP (Transparency and Openness Promotion Guidelines).
Transpose is a living resource; we invite contributions from anyone interested in journal policies. If you’re an editor or publisher, please add your journal data to Transpose or get in touch (transpose-publishing@googlegroups.com) to update existing records. We’d also be happy to see the data reused and remixed by other projects. More visibility and awareness of journal policies and practices will benefit authors, readers, reviewers, and editors alike.
We also used Transpose database to track open peer review (OPR) journals. Our results are published in the article as open access Wolfram, D., Wang, P., Hembree, A. et al. Open peer review: promoting transparency in open science. Scientometrics (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-020-03488-4