FAQs

PCI was created by Denis Bourguet, Benoit Facon and Thomas Guillemaud, senior scientists at INRAE (the French National Research Institute for Agriculture, Food, and Environment). The PCI websites and e-mail system were initially developed by Sylvain Piry and Alexandre Dehne Garcia, engineers at INRAE.

PCI is a non-profit scientific organization that aims to create and manage thematic communities of researchers reviewing and recommending, for free, articles posted on preprint servers and other open-access repositories. These thematic communities are entitled Peer Community in X, e.g. Peer Community in Evolutionary Biology, and PCI Ecology. PCI also publishes a diamond open-access journal, Peer Community Journal.

The aim of PCI is to provide scientists with a free, stimulating, transparent and non-exclusive way to evaluate, validate and promote their scientific output. The goal of the thematic PCIs is to highlight and recommend articles of particular interest to the community concerned. The articles recommended by PCIs are of high value, reliable and citable.

PCI is a non-profit association (French 1901 law). Its statutes, in French, can be downloaded here. A translation in English is here.

Yes, and this is one of the chief advantages of PCI. The recommendation process is not exclusive, and articles of interest to several different PCIs could be recommended by all the communities concerned. This aspect is of particular interest for articles dealing with multidisciplinary studies. There is no a priori hierarchy of communities, although some are highly generalist (e.g. PCI Ecology) whereas others are more specialized (e.g. PCI Forest and Wood Sciences). However, an article already recommended by one PCI can only be recommended by another PCI in the form already recommended. In other words, once a PCI has recommended an article, the article concerned must be considered reviewed (i.e. like a published article) by all the other PCIs interested in recommending it. This prevents the recommendation of multiple versions of an article.

In each PCI, new recommenders are nominated by current recommenders and approved by the Managing Board. If you are interested in becoming a recommender, please contact a current recommender in your field or a member of the Managing Board of a PCI.

Yes, as long as their expertise is recognized by their peers and that they have already published on the subject. Recommenders are generally selected among people who are post PhD, conduct independent research, and have at least a handful of first author articles (to ensure people have some experience with the publishing process).

No editing or formatting of the article (including, in particular, for references) is required before submission to a PCI but we advise to use these templates. The article should be presented to facilitate peer review (e.g. line numbering, definition of abbreviations, etc.). Complete instructions for authors are listed in the Guide for authors of each thematic PCI website, e.g. here.

The processes of publication and recommendation are not exclusive: a preprint evaluated by a PCI can subsequently be submitted to a journal. However, parallel submission to a journal and to a PCI — i.e. submission to a PCI at the same time as submission to a journal — is not permitted because:

– Parallel peer review is a waste of time and effort for the scientific community.

– Sequential evaluation (by a PCI first and then submission to a journal) is more likely to result in scientific improvement of the paper.

– A growing number of journals are accepting PCI evaluations as part of their own editorial process.

Yes, it is possible to recommend old/published articles. However, PCI focuses principally on the evaluation of new articles/experimental plans and unpublished articles (preprints).

When submitting their article to a PCI, the authors suggest several suitable recommenders based on the topic covered. If a recommender decides to handle the article, this recommender initiates the peer-review process. This process is very similar to the process of evaluation for publication in a journal, and includes at least two high-quality peer reviews. Based on these reviews, the recommender may decide to reject the article or to recommend it as it stands, or ask the authors to revise their article. Several rounds of reviews may be required before the recommender decides to reject or recommend an article. The recommender can decide to recommend the article once satisfactory responses have been obtained from the authors and the necessary changes have been made. Once validated by the Managing Board, the “recommendation” and all the editorial correspondence (reviews, decisions, authors’ replies) are then published by the thematic PCI.

An article already published in a journal can be recommended by a PCI if two recommenders consider it to be particularly interesting. In such cases, the recommenders directly write and jointly sign a “recommendation” that is published on the thematic PCI website after validation by the Managing Board, with a link to the DOI of the article.

Yes, see for instance this page.

• Reviewers can choose to sign their reviews that are published on the recommendation page. They can give the link to the recommendation or to their personal page on the corresponding PCI website (their reviews are available on both pages). Their reviews are therefore directly accessible by any evaluation committee.
• Recommenders always sign the recommendation that is published on the PCI website with a DOI. They can therefore include the reference of the recommendation in their list of scientific productions. Their editorial contribution is hence directly accessible by any evaluation committee.

PCI also recommends “postprints”, which we define as research papers that have already been published in peer-reviewed journals. PCI also considers books to be postprints because, despite not being evaluated by reviewers or editors before being published, they are often treated as such by academics.

As postprints (other than books, see above) have already undergone peer review before publication, an additional PCI peer review is not required for their recommendation. Each postprint recommendation is written by at least two PCI recommenders. Authors cannot submit their own articles or books to a thematic PCI for postprint recommendation. Instead, a postprint recommendation must be initiated by a recommender who has read the postprint and considers it worthy of recommendation. The recommender must then find at least one other co-recommender for completion of the recommendation process.

When a postprint recommendation is published by a thematic PCI, the word “postprint” is printed below the image illustrating the postprint, to differentiate it from preprint recommendations.

The recommendation text is published with a DOI, but is not accompanied by a peer review or editorial decision.

All information leading to the recommendation of an article is made public:

• The name of the recommender responsible for recommending the article, their editorial decisions and recommendation text, the reviews and suggested corrections and the authors’ replies are available from the thematic PCI website
• The consecutive versions of the preprint are freely accessible in open archives.

Only the name of the reviewers may be withheld if they choose to remain anonymous.

Bias, cronyism, retaliation and flattery are limited by i) the transparency of the reviews, which are freely available and may be signed, and ii) the transparency of recommendation texts, which are freely available and must be signed. In addition, PCI has established a code of conduct (no conflict of interest, no recommending of articles authored by close colleagues and/or friends, etc.) to be followed by recommenders, reviewers and authors. The Managing Board of the thematic PCI performs quality control to ensure reviews and recommendations comply with these ethical guidelines.

No, only reviews and comments leading to the attribution of a recommendation (positive, but with criticisms and suggestions for improvement) are published. When a paper is rejected, the reviews and comments are sent to the authors but are not published.

Yes, recommended articles are indexed. Google Scholar indexes all sorts of documents (articles, books, reports, etc.), including preprints deposited in repositories, such as arXiv, bioRxiv, and Hal. These platforms therefore record preprint citations in the same way as they record citations of articles published in journals. An author’s profile in Google Scholar would therefore take into account recommended articles, whether the articles concerned are articles from repositories or articles published in journals.

BioRxiv and MedRxiv index preprints recommended by a PCI here.

Most (more and more) journals are accepting articles deposited as preprints in open archives for submission. See http://www.sherpa.ac.uk/romeo/index.php

First, increasing numbers of journals are accepting articles deposited as preprints in open archives for submission.

Second, an article reviewed and recommended by a PCI is an article with a guaranteed level of quality. It is not a published paper. There is, therefore, no reason for a journal to refuse the submission of recommended articles, quite the opposite in fact.

Third, our list of recommenders includes numerous associate editors, editors and editors-in-chief of major journals.

Fourth, several journals have chosen to be PCI-friendly.

Fifth, since the creation of PCI, many recommended articles have been published in journals (see example).

• PCI-friendly journals have agreed to take the PCI evaluation into account in their own evaluation of articles.
  • They endorse the PCI review criteria and agree to accept, without further peer review, any manuscript recommended by PCI.
  • Or they clearly indicate to the authors, within a very short time frame, whether the article will be peer reviewed, accepted with no further peer review or rejected.
  • Or they consider submissions of articles recommended by a PCI and they may use PCI reviews and recommendations for their own review processes, if appropriate.

• After a recommendation, authors may choose the Peer Community Journal, any PCI-friendly journal (see below), another journal, or no journal, if they prefer the article to be hosted solely on their preferred preprint server or on an open repository. 
• If the authors choose to submit their article to a PCI-friendly journal committed to accepting PCI recommended articles, the article will be accepted without further peer review, provided that the subject and type of article fall within the scope of the journal. The journal may ask for minor modifications of format.
• If the authors choose to submit their article to a PCI-friendly journal committed to providing the authors with a fast answer, they will receive a rapid response, generally within five days, indicating whether the journal is interested, whether additional reviews are needed or whether the article is accepted with minor modifications. Following this response, the authors may decide to withdraw their article and to submit it to another journal.
• If the authors choose to submit their article to a PCI-friendly journal committed to use the PCI evaluation if appropriate, then the journal may or may not use the PCI evaluation. 
• The authors can successively submit their article to as many PCI-friendly journal as they choose. They can choose to submit their article to the Peer Community Journal at any time.

Once an article has been recommended by a PCI, the authors can opt to publish it in Peer Community Journal, to leave it on a preprint server, to submit it to a PCI-friendly journal or to any other journal.

Peer Community Journal is run by researchers for researchers, and is funded by public research institutions. It is:

• Unique = it is a single journal for all PCIs
• Free = it is a diamond open-access journal (free for both authors and readers).
• Exclusive = it publishes only articles recommended by PCI
• Unconditional = it can publish any PCI-recommended article in its existing state
• Opt-in = it publishes articles only if the authors wish it
• Immediate = there is no delay between submission and publication
• Community-based

This journal, created and funded by the PCI organization accepts PCI-recommended articles without further peer review.

Following its launch, Peer Community Journal will be evaluated by international scientific databases for indexation.

The articles published by Peer Community Journal are published under CC-BY license.

The recommendation applies only to a particular version of the article, mentioned on the thematic PCI website and in the reference list of the recommendation. The version of the article published in the journal should mention the PCI-recommended article and the recommendation, usually in the acknowledgements written by the authors (example), or as a note on the publisher’s webpage of the article (example). We advise the authors to insert a sentence on this subject in the acknowledgements of their article when they submit it to a journal, such as “Preprint version X [replace X by the version number of the recommended preprint] of this article has been peer-reviewed and recommended by PCI X [replace X by the name of the PCI] (DOI [replace DOI by the doi of the recommendation])”.

Yes, every registered user on a PCI website can comment on recommendations. All comments are welcome, provided that they deal with science, are signed and are respectful. Comments considered abusive can be notified to the Managing Board, which may decide to withdraw them.

Yes, every registered user on a PCI website can reply to a comment, provided that the reply deals with science, is signed and is respectful. Comments considered abusive can be notified to the Managing Board, which may decide to withdraw them.

If a reader disagrees with a recommendation or with any comments on an article, they can write a comment. This comment will be published, provided that it is signed and is respectful. Comments not respecting these rules can be notified to the Managing Board, which may decide to withdraw them.