FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS
For Reviewers
What benefits does acting as a reviewer to provide an error check have?
Providing an error check, and therefore being listed on error.reviews as a reviewer, is a visible commitment to scientific rigour. As a meta-scientific skill set, error detection is currently in growing demand, and participating in this project as a reviewer is a visible testament to those skills. In addition to this, you will also be provided with a participation fee for your participation in ERROR (see Participation Rewards & Rationale).
What would be asked of me if I agreed to act as a reviewer?
౿ You would be put in touch with the author(s) of the article who has agreed to have their article checked for errors. They have been instructed to share all data, code, and materials relevant to the project with you in order to check for errors. You may ask the original authors reasonable follow-up questions to aid you in this error checking process. Note that (a) the recommender is available to arbitrate what constitutes a reasonable request in relation to the expected time commitments for participation, and (b) that a decision of “interminable” can be returned (see How are errors quantified? in the general FAQ). You should cc the recommender on all correspondence you have with the authors that is relevant to this project.
౿ You have broad licence to check for errors of whatever sort you deem appropriate (see What constitutes an error? in the general FAQ). You must write a report substantiating the checks you have performed and what results you have observed (see below), which can be verified by others. You must supply all necessary data, code, and other materials to do this.
Can I remain anonymous as a reviewer?
This project seeks to foster a collaborative process between recommenders, error checkers (reviewers), and authors. Except in rare cases, which would need to be approved ahead of time by the recommender, we expect that reviewers and authors will be in direct contact with one another in order to work collaboratively, and that reviewers will be named as the authors of their reports.
What should the reviewer’s report on their error checking contain?
Reviewers are asked to write a report on the target article that specifies which elements of the article they have scrutinised and what their findings are. This report can discuss things that are errors, not errors, or are ambiguously errors: it is a forum for post-publication critique that focuses on error checking but can go beyond it. However, the report must contain two distinct sections: “Error checking” and “Other critique”. The recommender may require that material is moved from the “Error checking” section to the “Other critiques” section, or changed or removed based on relevance, validity, or appropriateness. The recommender’s final error assessment and recommendations will be based only on the “Error checking” section
Who owns the reviewer’s report?
The reviewer retains copyright of their report but must apply a CC-By 4.0 licence and agree to it being hosted on the error.reviews website. Reviewers are free to do with the report as they wish. This allows reviewers to, for example, submit their report (or a version of it) as a commentary to an academic journal, or to tweet or blog about it, or to post it or a version of it on PubPeer.
Can I volunteer to be a reviewer?
Similar to pre-publication peer review, we recruit experts based on their relevant technical or domain expertise. If you’d like to volunteer as a reviewer you can contact us.