Select Crowd Review

This new method offers secure, fast and substantive reviewing in today’s fast-moving scientific world.

The Select Crowd Review process is an interactive and safe way to improve the quality and speed of publishing. It was first introduced for Thieme's chemical synthesis journal SYNLETT in 2017 and allows editors an evaluation of a manuscript within a very short time. It has also been available for SynOpen since 2018 and for Sustainability & Circularity NOW from 2023.
Select Crowd Review uses the mechanisms of social media communication to make the review process much faster than classical peer review, and still with the same or even better quality.

How it works

A selection of about 50–100 experts, who are exclusive members of the crowd, receives a link to the manuscript and can comment on it anonymously via a secure web-interface, provided by our technology Partner Filestage. Only the editor knows who the reviewers are while Monitoring the process.

Each reviewer decides if he or she has time and expertise to comment on the respective article. Participating reviewers see each other's comments and can discuss the research featured in the paper to improve the manuscript further. They can respond, interact, and enhance it in parallel.

After 48–72 hours (on average) the review period ends, and the manuscript is taken off the platform. In the next step, the editor evaluates the comments of the reviewers, decides about accepting (with or without revision) or rejecting the article and sends the feedback of the crowd to the author for consideration and implementation.

Please note that both the crowd size and the review duration are flexible and up to the decision of the editor.

What it offers

In the first year after the introduction of Select Crowd Review for SYNLETT, experience has proved that the innovative process delivers substantive feedback to the authors, with the same or higher quality than classical peer review does, in only a few days. This allows editors to decide about the acceptance of a manuscript much faster and therefore shortens the time from submission to publication.

We will continue to improve Select Crowd Review together with editors, authors, and reviewers that the innovative process will not just benefit SYNLETT and SynOpen, but potentially the wider scientific community.

Submit your paper and try Select Crowd Review now!

By submitting your manuscript to SYNLETT or SynOpen and selecting “Crowd Review” as your preference, you can experience and discover the process for yourself. You can also choose both classic peer review and Crowd Review in parallel to compare the results.Select Crowd Review is the standard peer review process for Sustainability & Circularity NOW.

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