Peerwith Publisher and Institutional Solutions: taking our vision into the future

Our vision is that every researcher has the opportunity to select, connect and collaborate with experts to improve the quality of their academic work. We are Peerwith, the smartest platform for expert-led researcher services. We offer a secure marketplace environment to our partners, powered by Peerwith. These partners are logical aggregators like scientific publishers and institutions.

To-date our focus has been on setting up successful partnerships with global publishers (e.g. Brill, Emerald, Hindawi), and piloting partnerships with universities and research institutions (e.g. Erasmus University Rotterdam) which has greatly enhanced our reach. Crowdfunding is the next logical step for our expert-led, researcher-services platform. In this new phase, we will be shifting our focus to accelerating the growth of institutional solutions, as well as fine-tuning the researcher services we offer to the global academic community.

Expanding our service package

In a previous post, I outlined our change in strategy: researcher services instead of author services. Following this post, we introduced several new service categories to our platform:

Firstly, we introduced manuscript writing support, where experts mentor authors throughout the writing process so they can present their research in the best possible light. We believe involving (language) editors early in the writing process provides a huge benefit to authors.

Secondly, we introduced a pre-submission manuscript review service. This service offers researchers “Go/No Go” advice from experienced authors and editors. Academic peer review can take several months, and it can happen that a paper is then rejected for easily-avoidable reasons. Our pre-submission advice helps authors move more smoothly through the peer-review process, ensuring they know what is needed to get published. 

And lastly, we recently launched a free machine translation service from Spanish into English to empower human interaction in post-editing. Recent advancements in the language industry have been very impressive. All eyes are currently on Machine Translation (MT) and on what machine learning could mean for the future of translation. There’s been lively discussion around whether Neural Machine Translation (NMT) will eliminate the need for human translators and many believe the absence of translators will soon be a possibility.  We believe we are at the point where this could be true!  Our bold view is backed up by several Peerwith experts, who when approached said they were of the same opinion.

Moving forward, we plan to continue to expand our service package with new expert-led researcher services.

Institutional Solutions

Peerwith can help institutional researchers raise the quality of their scientific output to meet the publication standards of high impact journals. Our partnerships with institutions connect researchers with thousands of international, academic experts and provide a simple payment solution for the institution.

Our Institutional Solutions package can comprise of the following:

·       Payment solution: A monthly invoice to cover all services provided to researchers at the institution by Peerwith

·       Managed budget: Agreement of a pre-paid, set budget ensuring institutions keep control over expenditure

·       Publication support: Inclusion of a pre-submission manuscript preparation services to increase the chance of manuscripts being accepted for publication in international, high impact journals

·       Private marketplace: A customized landing page linking researchers to pre-selected, international and local experts on the Peerwith platform

The Partner Cockpit will be a new and key feature in our partner approach and a major attraction in the Institutional Solutions on offer. It will be a management console offering an aggregated view of platform projects, plus related solutions for vendor management and analytics. Individual users will have their own Dashboards. The Cockpit will be a higher-level application, intended for administrative users at partner level, tracking multiple users’ platform activity. It will provide institutions with an overview of their researchers’ activity on the Peerwith platform. Read more about our Partner Development Program.

Publisher Solutions

Peerwith offers an extensive range of author services in a transparent, peer-2-peer marketplace. In our partnerships with publishers and societies we integrate author services into their ecosystems, ensuring all workflows are fully customized to individual requirements. International academic experts are brought into the workflow at the point publishers/societies desire, and connections take place in a secure and transparent peer2-peer marketplace. If you are a publisher or society, our platform can support you in achieving your business goals. Tell us your needs and let us deal with the integration.

Our Publisher Solutions Author Services package can comprise of the following:

·       Curated experts: The most common solution - a customized landing page linking to a pre-selected group of international experts on the Peerwith platform, whose knowledge encompasses the same subject areas covered by the publisher or society

·       Branded marketplace: A publisher-branded marketplace allowing authors to connect with international experts in the publisher environment, powered by Peerwith

New: Editorial Services

In addition to Author Services, we also provide Editorial Services, using the same pool of publication and editorial experts. Peerwith can integrate tailored researcher and author services into your ecosystem with a fully customized workflow. International academic experts are brought into your workflow at the point you desire, and connections take place in a secure and transparent peer-to-peer marketplace. If you require a combination of author and editorial services, or just editorial services on their own, again just tell us your needs and let us deal with the integration.

Packages can include a range of tailored services, including Technical screening, Revision workflow and/or Manuscript preparation services. All services provided by selected experts done after submission, or even acceptance, are aligned with pre-submission author services.

For the future, we envision further integration of pre-submission author services and post-submission editorial services. As an example, curated experts can be trained on the requirements of post-submission processing, so manuscript preparation services truly lead to a more efficient editorial process. Looking at it from another angle, our unique peer-to-peer model can also be brought into (copy) editing services taking place post-acceptance. The entity paying for the service (publisher) and the person consuming the service (author) are not necessarily one and the same. So why not let authors pick the copy-editor, for example? We believe post-acceptance editing tasks should also be a collaboration between two “experts” rather than the offshored process it currently is.

Through Peerwith, we can further integrate expert involvement in both the pre- and post-submission process, to increase efficiency, lower costs and improve author experiences.

If you want to know more, feel free to reach out to me here on LinkedIn.