Leadership in peer review

At IOP Publishing we believe that peer review is the backbone of robust and trustworthy research. We always look for ways to improve and innovate the process and offer training and certification to strengthen reviewer skills and recognition.

Strengthening research integrity

As part of our commitment to research integrity, we expanded our research integrity team to six experts, applying best practice in integrity and ethics. Research integrity affects all stakeholders in scholarly communications – we therefore take part in industry-leading trials and initiatives, including the STM Integrity Hub. With our partner Morressier, we are committed to building peer review infrastructure that has integrity at its heart. 

Increasing the diversity of our Trusted Reviewer community

A record-breaking number of 4,082 researchers received IOP Trusted Reviewer Status building on the 10,000 milestone achieved in 2022, and increasing the percentage of female Trusted Reviewers and Trusted Reviewers from Asia, China, Central and South America, The Middle East and Africa.

Peer Review Excellence training programme

More than 1,000 researchers completed our free online peer review excellence course in 2023, 25% more than last year. The course helps reviewers to boost their competency and raise the quality of reviewer reports .

Co-review

We extended our co-review policy to our entire owned journal portfolio to ensure that all reviewers get the credit that they deserve. Nearly 1,000 researchers have now co-reviewed with a colleague. The quality of co-review reports has been outstanding, with 188 people achieving IOP Trusted Reviewer status through co-review.

Reviewer Feedback

We introduced feedback for reviewers to enhance the quality of peer review and to strengthen best practice in the physical sciences. Reviewers can now opt-in to receive constructive information about the structure and usefulness of the reports, which explains the evaluation that their report received.

ALPSP Innovation Award

IOPP was awarded the 2023 Association of Learned and Professional Society Publisher’s (ALPSP) Impact Award for the introduction of double-anonymous and transparent peer review across all our peer reviewed journals.