Benefits for reviewers

We would love scholars to volunteer to become reviewers. Several criteria have to be fulfilled to become a reviewer - authors interested should send us an email with their CV to info@frelsi.org.

The benefits of reviewing for Frelsi are:

• Each reviewer receives 50% discount on all publishing fees if the reviewer is active – no more than a year has passed from submission of their last review.
• Each submitted review can be linked with Publons account of the reviewer. Publons is a great way to keep a third-party verified track record of all reviews and can be used to improve academic and professional track record.
• The reviews are publicly accessible to everyone, so senior scholars, as well as junior researchers, can receive recognition for the time and effort invested into reviews.
• Once a paper passed the review, it will be indexed in external databases such as Google Scholar, or Scopus and both online and offline version will include all the reviews crediting the work reviewers do.

How to review

The main difference of our publishing system compared to traditional journals is that the peer-review is open and takes place after a paper is published. This system accelerates the publishing process helping authors maintain their competitive edge while providing a rigorous evaluation of their work. It also diminishes the selection bias of traditional editorial boards. More details can be found in publishing model section. Reviewers follow guidelines for each paper option and are expected to evaluate scientific soundness of the writing:

• Is the presented text discussing the topic of a paper in the view of appropriate references?

• Have authors used appropriate approach and analysis?

• Have the authors provided enough data and information to recreate the results in the paper successfully?

• Are the outcomes based on the findings?

Part of the feedback is to select an acceptance status of the article out of three options:

Accepted - paper needs only minor to no corrections. In the case of a research paper, the analysis, methods, and experiments are satisfactory, and the conclusion is adequate and is rooted in the results.

Accepted with restrictions - the paper has technical shortcomings, but the weaknesses can be addressed by revising the critical points. Possibly, significant revisions are needed.

Not accepted - the standards the paper are low, and it has elemental flaws that render the results and conclusions presented invalid.

Each article has its own 'review status' and metrics table when viewed. The reports of the reviewers and their names and affiliations are displayed on the article page. The revisions of the paper are at the authors' discretion. Reviewers are invited to examine the revised versions and give further feedback to evaluate if the paper earned a status change in case it was deemed 'Not accepted' or 'Accepted with restrictions.'

Review progress

Frelsi introduces an innovative approach to scholarly publishing through an open, post-publication peer-review process by invitation. Our publication model dramatically improves the transparency of the publishing process by disclosing the reviews, as well as the identities of the reviewers. Frelsi is author-driven publishing platform. Authors, therefore, suggest the reviewers suitable to evaluate their work. The flow of the review is as follows:

• Once the paper passes the initial screening and formatting, authors are prompted to suggest five qualified reviewers and make a payment for publishing. At this point, the paper is published and assigned a DOI.
• We ensure that the reviewers suggested by the authors are qualified and have no conflict of interests. Frelsi selects and invites potential reviewers. Once at least one reviewer accepts the invitation, the article is assigned status 'Under review' indicated on the article page.
• Reviewers who accept to review the article, submit their reviews. These are posted on the article page together with the responses of the authors.
• The article goes through rigorous review rounds until it receives at least two 'Accepted' statuses or two 'Accepted with restrictions,' and one 'Accepted' status.
• After that, the article passed review and its status changes to 'Accepted.' In case authors find minor issues at this point, they can still update the article after contacting Frelsi at no additional cost. Registered users can report their concerns during, or after the review process to further improve the transparency and precision of the review.

Tips for reviewing

Researchers are authors, reviewers, and consumers of the content of research journals. During graduate studies, some students are taught how to write a research paper, but few are instructed on how to review. At Frelsi, we believe that review is equally important as authorship. This fact is evident especially with the legacy journals, where authors may experience biased, or less-than-thorough review of their papers.

Several paper options are available with Frelsi to help authors frame their work accurately. Instructions on how to review each paper type are here (soon available).

Here are few tips on how a good review should look like:

• Stay focused – make sure the remarks are within the scope of the paper.

• Keep it rational – criticism is important, as well as ensuring that requests reviewer might have are realistic.

• Be constructive –  the review is meant to help authors improve their papers, be clear about the issues pointed out and suggest how to improve them.

• Detail vs. brevity – the middle ground between overly descriptive or concise review is precision. Write as much and as little as necessary.

• Be polite – do not hold any criticism back, but keep it civil. Be as analytical as possible and avoid harsh language.

• Give it time – similar to writing, thoroughly reviewing a paper takes time. Thoroughness of reviewers improves the quality of the paper.

• Structure is clarity – Divide the comments into major and minor, use bullet points, it helps to communicate ideas.

• Give credit – if a paper is well written, express it!

• Be considerate – only a fraction of the authors are native English speakers, point out the items that impair the clarity of the ideas presented.