7th November 2022. Taylor & Francis has announced it is trialing the Research Quality Evaluation Service from Research Square to help find qualified peer reviewers more quickly.

With growing numbers of article submissions and increasing competing demands on researchers, finding suitable reviewers in a timely manner is recognized as a significant challenge across scholarly publishing. This can delay new research from reaching the world and realizing its potential to foster progress. To help tackle this problem, Taylor & Francis is exploring a range of processes and services that support journal editors and maintain the integrity of the peer review process.

This new pilot service, being introduced to a small number of Taylor & Francis titles, will be used where a journal is unable to find sufficient peer reviewers within a reasonable timeframe. The experienced team at Research Square will then match the papers with suitable available reviewers, ensuring journal editors soon have a full set of reports to inform their decisions.

As is standard for the Research Square service, peer reviewers will receive a small honorarium for reviews that are returned on time. This will be paid regardless of whether their report is positive or negative. Paying researchers to review has both supporters and detractors but Taylor & Francis is committed to evidence-based discussion of the topic, to which the findings of this pilot will contribute.

Research Square confirms all reviewers are active researchers of appropriate seniority and checks the quality of every reviewer report. Robust screening processes are also in place to prevent researchers with competing interests or a record of research misconduct from being invited to review.

Rebecca Furlong, Head of Reviewer Programmes at Taylor & Francis, said, "We are seeing more papers being submitted than ever before, which means that finding reviewers with both the time and appropriate expertise to review a paper can sometimes be challenging. Good science involves scrutiny by expert peers, and for that reason we are exploring many options to make sure peer review works effectively and efficiently for the needs of today's researchers. We're looking forward to seeing how well the service offered by Research Square supplements the existing reviewer-finding tools and support available to Taylor & Francis editors."

About Research Square

Research Square Company, a five-time INC 5000 award winner, exists to make research communication faster, fairer, and more useful. Through our industry leading preprint platform, Research Square, research promotion tools, and AJE's comprehensive suite of manuscript preparation services, we are proud to have supported over 2.5 million authors in 192 countries since our founding in 2004. Across all sides of our business, our team of former researchers and publishing industry professionals truly understand the importance of sharing research results with the world. By helping researchers communicate their work more effectively, we accelerate the pace of global discovery and advancement.

For more information on our services, corporate responsibility, and partnership opportunities, visit company.researchsquare.com.

About Taylor & Francis

Taylor & Francis partners with researchers, scholarly societies, universities, and libraries worldwide to bring knowledge to life. As one of the world's leading publishers of scholarly journals, books, eBooks and reference works, its content spans all areas of Humanities, Social Sciences, Behavioral Sciences, Science, Technology, and Medicine.

From our network of offices in Oxford, New York, Philadelphia, Boca Raton, Melbourne, Singapore, Beijing, Tokyo, Cape Town, and New Delhi, Taylor & Francis staff provide local expertise and support to our editors, societies and authors and tailored, efficient customer service to our library colleagues.