Service Spotlight: In Review

Author: Penny Freedman

In Review is a new way to open up the submissions and peer review process. Learn more about this new service, which will allow you more insight than ever before into your manuscript’s editorial progress. Amye Kenall, Global Head of Life Sciences, Open Research at Springer Nature shares more.

What exactly is In Review?

Powered by Research Square, In Review offers authors a personal dashboard to easily track the status of their manuscript, and the opportunity to share it with the wider community earlier in the submission and peer review process.

Who can utilize In Review?

In the first instance, this service will be available across four BMC journals: BMC Anesthesiology, BMC Neurology, BMC Ophthalmology, and Trials.

What are some of the things I can do with In Review?

• Share your work while it is under review and engage the wider community in discussion (through the Hypothes.is open annotation tool)
• Track the status of your manuscript on a more granular level – including number of reviewers invited, number of reports received, and immediate access to reviewer reports
• Demonstrate the integrity of your work with a transparent editorial checklist
• Benefit from early sharing, including potential for earlier citations and collaboration opportunities

What are some things that the research community will be able to do with In Review?

• Follow, and comment on, emerging science
• Find new discoveries with fully-indexed search
• Note which editorial checks the manuscript has already passed
• Gain insight into the peer review pipeline of a particular manuscript

Why did we create this service?

A manuscript is much more than words on paper. It is the culmination of months or years of hard work, and could potentially lead to recognition for you and your whole team. It seems incongruous that once you press the ‘submit to journal’ button, your article disappears into a publishing process that can be opaque, and hard for even the most experienced researchers to navigate. And the first time you receive feedback on your manuscript from outside your immediate circle, it is in the high-stakes setting of peer review.

Learn more

Watch the video below and read more here