The Unjournal organizes and commissions journal-independent public evaluation & quantified rating of global-priorities-relevant research in social science and economics.

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Who we are

The Unjournal will enable researchers to gain meaningful, credible quantitative evaluation and feedback on their research papers and dynamic, open projects, before/after/instead of submitting to traditional journals. Evaluations and ratings will be public, providing relevant metrics of research quality and relevance to policymakers and other researchers, as well as to the gatekeepers of academia (hiring and tenure commitees and grantmakers). We focus on work that is highly relevant to global priorities (especially in economics, social science, and impact evaluation).

We are building on existing initiatives and tools (using Kotahi and Sciety) while taking a unique approach in several dimensions.

  1. Identifying and soliciting relevant research work, which can be hosted on any open platform.

  2. Paying reviewers to evaluate and give careful (and public) feedback on this work.

  3. We will elicit quantifiable and comparable metrics of research quality as credible measures of value.

  4. Linking work but not 'publishing it'. This process will not be 'exclusive': authors can 'submit their work to a journal' at any point.

  5. Awarding financial prizes (paired with public presentations).

Our evaluation model

Open, transparent peer review and feedback along with overall and multidimensional quantitative evaluations and predictions. We pay reviewers for their time, and encourage in-depth assessment, with incentives/prizes for the strongest work. Reviewers can typically choose whether or not they want to disclose their identity (‘sign their review). See the our Guidelines for Evaluators.

PReF

The Preprint Review Features (PReF) describes key elements of each group’s evaluation activities.

Review requested by
Authors, Non-authors
Reviewer selected by
Editor, service or community
Public interaction
Not included
Inclusion of author response
Included
Decision
Other scale or rating
Review coverage
Complete paper
Reviewer identity known to
Editor or Service, Public or Service
Competing interests
Not included

Our team

  • David Reinstein
  • Daniel Lakens
  • Emmanuel Orkoh
  • Gavin Taylor
  • Hansika Kapoor
  • Kris Gulati
  • Ryan Briggs
  • Tanya O’Garra

Content license

All published content (incuding open peer reviews) are published under a CC-BY 4.0 license.