We are very pleased to announce that this is the one year anniversary of PeerJ – it was on June 12th, 2012 that we first announced ourselves and started the process towards becoming a fully-fledged publishing company! Today, just 12 months later, PeerJ is completely up and running; we are publishing high quality peer-reviewed science; and we are doing our very best to change the world by pushing the boundaries of Open Access!
To briefly overview what has been achieved in the last year – we announced ourselves on June 12th 2012 and opened the PeerJ doors for submissions on December 3rd. We published our first PeerJ articles on Feb 12th 2013, and followed up by launching PeerJ PrePrints on April 3rd 2013. This last year has been spent recruiting an Editorial Board of 800 world renowned researchers; building cutting edge submission, peer-review, publication and pre-print software from scratch; establishing ourselves with all the major organizations who archive, index, list and certify new publications; and building an entirely new type of publishing company from the ground up.
Some of the highlights have included:
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the fantastic reception to our membership model which means that authors now have a way to publish for their lifetime for a single low price payment (starting at just $99);
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the fact that we have been processing submissions with extreme speed and effectiveness;
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the fact that our Open Peer Review process has been so well received with over 40% of reviewers now providing their name and almost 80% of authors making their reviews public;
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being named by the Chronicle of Higher Education as one of the “Top 10 Tech Innovators in the Education Sector” and by Nature as “a significant innovation”;
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and of course the fact that the journal has turned out to be so innovative, beautiful and aesthetically pleasing.
The giveaway
We are celebrating this milestone with a new PeerJ Competition. On June 19th, we will give away 12 “complimentary publication” passes (the ability to publish one paper with us at no cost to you or any of your co-authors) + a PeerJ Charlie T-Shirt + a pin + a fridge magnet (!) to a random selection of 12 people (one for each month of our first year) who publicly post some variation of the following message:
“PeerJ just turned one! Open access publishing, for just $99 for life – check them out and submit now!”
Please include a link to us as well (you choose the best one!).
The last year has been an intense journey, and to be honest we have been so busy we almost missed the anniversary! We would like to take this opportunity to thank the many thousands of researchers who have signed up as PeerJ Members; all those who have authored or reviewed articles; all those who have joined our Editorial Board; and anyone who have simply expressed their support – without the involvement and enthusiasm of these people we would not be where we are today. Of course, we must also thank our dedicated staff (Alf Eaton, Patrick McAndrew and Jackie Thai) and Tim O’Reilly, who collectively took a chance on a brand new publishing concept, but who have been irreplaceable in making us what we are today!
Please encourage your colleagues to look into PeerJ, and make sure they consider submitting their next article to us. The future of academic publishing is here, right now.
The PeerJ Founders
and the PeerJ Team