User:Ivan Shmakov/Wikijournal peer review 2013

Peer review is the public process employed by the Wikijournal project at Wikiversity to ensure reasonable quality of the published work. Peer review is performed by unpaid reviewers volunteering for this work, elected by the community based on their formal research experience in one or more fields of study, and on their knowledge and acceptance of the policies of the project.

This page contains proposed guidelines for the process.

Submission and community participation
An original work is submitted by its author (or one of its authors, in agreement with the others) for the Wikijournal peer review process in the form of a Wikiversity page by adding for wikijournal to the top of the page, and creating a section at the Wikijournal submissions page, thus initiating a formal discussion of the proposed Wikijournal publication.

Any member of the Wikiversity community may comment on the suitability of the work for publication in Wikijournal, and at any time, although those not formally elected as Wikijournal reviewers are requested to wait for either formal or informal reviews to appear before joining the discussion there.

The comments and questions on the work per se should be added to the latter’s talk page, and are welcome at any time.

Peer review
Any member of the community may write an informal review of the work in question, creating a new participant’s subpage for the purpose, and advertising the review in the respective section on the Wikijournal submissions page.

A review is expected to address both the content of the submission, and its presentation. The reviewer is expected to thoroughly examine the work, ranging from the substance and the illustrative material, down to the adherence to a consistent style and proper Wiki formatting. The reviewer is also expected to take reasonable effort to ensure that the work is free of plagiarism, that the works cited support the claims made, and point out any inconsistencies found in the review.

A review authored by an elected Wikijournal reviewer is considered formal should it be marked as such by the reviewer, and should the work being reviewed belong to one or more of the fields of study the reviewer has formal research experience in.

Acceptance
The fate of the proposed submission is decided based on the following criteria:
 * the submission is considered withdrawn should the author (or authors) declare its withdrawal;
 * the submission is considered rejected should all of the following conditions be met:
 * there is at least one formal review recommending rejection of the submission;
 * the strict majority of the elected reviewers participating in the discussion voted against the acceptance;
 * the last comment from an elected reviewer came at least a week ago;
 * the submission is considered preliminary accepted should all of the following conditions be met:
 * there is at least one formal review recommending acceptance of the submission;
 * the strict majority of the elected reviewers participating in the discussion voted for the acceptance;
 * the overall community reaction is supportive of the acceptance;
 * the last comment from an elected reviewer came at least a week ago;
 * the discussion is considered closed should there be no comments from elected reviewers for at least four weeks, while neither of the conditions above are met.

The works considered preliminary accepted are subject to further review by the custodians to ensure that the process above was duly followed.

Eligibility
A Wikiversity participant willing to write reviews for works in one or more fields of study may become a Wikijournal reviewer, subject to the following eligibility criteria:
 * the user’s account used by the participant is active for at least a week and is otherwise in good standing with the community;
 * the participant has disclosed his or her name, as used on the works authored, to the public (including, but not limited to, the fellow Wikiversity participants), by either stating it in the clear on the respective user page, or by using a username matching such a name;
 * the participant has formal research experience in one or more fields of study;
 * the formal application made by the participant passes community approval.

The applicant may be required to disclose his or her email to the custodians (possibly in a private communication), the domain part of which is verifiable (by the means of a Whois query) against the institution the applicant claims affiliation with (as per the published research.)

Research experience evaluation
The applicant is considered to have formal research experience in a field of study if he or she has published one or more works related to that field in scientific peer-review media, as determined by searching one or more of the respective bibliographic databases for the name stated.

Community approval
Any Wikiversity participant may comment upon the formal application for the reviewer status, although more weight should be given to the argumented opinions of the elected reviewers verified to have formal research experience in one or more of the fields of study the applicant claims to have formal research experience in, or the related fields, based on their closeness.

The discussion for the application is closed after there were no comments from elected reviewers for at least a week. For the application to be approved, it’s required for the strict majority of the elected reviewers participating in the discussion to support the approval, and for the overall community reaction to be supportive of the application.