Reviewers' update

Dear Reader,

For the next two issues, I will be stepping into Ursula’s shoes as Editor-in-Chief of the Reviewers’ Update, to provide a newsletter offering guidance and support for reviewers during peer review. Colleagues at Elsevier will continue to share news about our products, services and innovations relevant to you, as reviewers.

Issue 14 comprises four articles. The first addresses the hot topic of open access by explaining Elsevier’s position and providing information about how we are working with institutions and research organizations with open access mandates or policies. In this issue’s poll, we would also like to hear your views on open access by asking you to vote on whether you would be more likely to review an article if you knew it was open access?

Our second article reports on the success of a recent virtual seminar, The Individual and Scholarly Networks, co-hosted by Research Trends and Elsevier Labs. The event attracted over 500 attendees from all over the world and featured six external speakers. Split into two parts, the first focused on building networks through varying degrees of openness and information linking. The second part evaluated network relationships, exploring alternative metrics, contributorship and the culture of reference.

In our third article, we outline the support Elsevier offers reviewers through the 30 days free access to Scopus service, which is available for everybody who reviews a paper for an Elsevier journal. Scopus is a must-have resource of high-quality publications which can be very useful during the peer review process.

Lastly, we outline a new annual recognition program that we have developed for reviewers, as part of our ongoing efforts to recognize and support our reviewer community. The Certificate of Peer Reviewing Excellence started as a pilot with 35 journals to recognize “outstanding” reviewers selected by Editors.

I would like to sincerely thank those of you who guide the content of this newsletter by sending in your feedback and comments. Please do contact me with suggestions for topics which you would like to see included in future issues.

I hope you enjoy this issue.

Kind regards,

Lyndsay Scholefield
Editor-in-Chief

In this issue’s Reviewer Profile we meet Dr. Annela Seddon , Bristol Centre for Functional Nanomaterials at University of Bristol, UK.

Annela graduated from Edinburgh University with an MChem in 1999 and began her PhD in the lab of Professor Steve Mann FRS in the School of Chemistry at the University of Bristol, in the area of bio molecular tem plating of organic-inorganic hybrid structures. Her postdoc in membrane protein folding was in the School of Medical Sciences. Annela was awarded a Life Sciences Interface Fellowship by the Epsrc in 2006 which she held at the Imperial College London and the University of Chicago, where her work was on the use of microfluidics in the study of protein aggregation and crystallization. Annela has been at the University of Bristol since 2009. Read more...