Working Group on Peer Review Taxonomy

STM recognises a need for identifying and standardising definitions and terminology in (open) peer review practices. A peer review taxonomy that is used across publishers will help make the peer review process for articles more transparent, and it will enable the community to better assess and compare peer review practices between different journals.

With this background, STM has set up a working group (WG) in the beginning of 2020 to develop such standardised definitions and associated best practice recommendations, to be widely supported by publishers and other scholarly stakeholders. 

The first draft of the taxonomy was made public in the spring of 2020, after which a public consultation phase was organized in the summer of 2020. The latest version of the taxonomy document can be found on OSF

In January 2021, a one-year pilot started with participants from the WG and other publishers. During this pilot, publishers implemented the taxonomy on journal and article level for a selection of their titles.

Members of the Working Group were:

Caroline Black, Publishing Director for STM Journals, Cambridge University Press
Maria Kowalczuk, Research Integrity Manager, Springer Nature
Sabina Alam, Director, Publishing Ethics & Integrity, Taylor & Francis
Elizabeth Moylan, Publisher, Research Integrity and Publishing Ethics, Wiley
Lois Jones, Peer Review manager, American Psychological Association
Bahar Mehmani, Reviewer Experience Lead, Elsevier
Gabe Stein, Head of Product and Operations, Knowledge Futures Group
Alison Larkin, Senior Manager, Peer Review Support Services, IEEE
Joris van Rossum, STM (project lead)

Since July of 2021, the project continues as a NISO Working Group.

For more information, please contact Joris van Rossum at rossum@stm-assoc.org