Peer reviewing of manuscripts for publishers or grant proposals for funders is one of the professional activities that researchers are expected to conduct as part of their scholarly activities. This can be time-consuming and is a skilled and important activity. However, due to the nature of peer review (it is often anonymous), gaining credit for this activity has often been overlooked. Several publishers and other organisations are now integrating their systems with ORCID so that the review contributions of researchers can be recognised on authors' ORCID profiles.
In December 2020, UKRI announced that reviewers for UKRI would be able to get formal recognition for their review contributions by linking their ORCID identifiers to Je-S. Reviewer recognition gives UKRI a visible and verified means of publicly acknowledging the contributions of reviewers without breaching the confidentiality and anonymity of the review process.
In order to get ORCID review credits for reviews conducted for UKRI you have to link your ORCID iD to your Je-S account. This can be found in the 'ORCID consent control' page in Je-S. Once linked, UKRI should be listed as a 'trusted organisation' within your ORCID iD.
If you linked your Je-S account to ORCID before August 2017, you need to remove the current linking and then reconnect your ORCID. You will need to contact Je-S help to arrange this.
The reviewer recognition process is automatic with UKRI sending review information to your ORCID once you have completed a usable review and a funding decision has been made on the funding application that you reviewed. Review credits will be sent to ORCID six times a year at the end of January, March, May, July, September and November. Please be aware that it could take up to six months for you to receive reviewer credits in your ORCID record. The integration will apply to all reviews submitted via Je-S after the 23 November 2020.
In order to keep the review process anonymous and confidential, the data transferred from Je-S will not include the details of the application, the full date of the review or the UKRI council for which the review was conducted. The ORCID record will show:
In order for the peer review section to appear in your ORCID record, you have to make the review activity visible to everyone using the privacy settings in your ORCID record. The peer review section will not appear until a trusted organisation has added a review credit to your record.
Below are some examples of what kind of entries might appear in the Peer Review section of an ORCID profile.
Reviewing activity for a Journal (in this case, the fictitious Journal of Psychoceramics - cracked pots!)
In this case, the record shows numerous peer review activities including credit for reviewing for a journal and for a research organisation. The review activity for Nature Neuroscience gives the role of the researcher - Editor or Reviewer - and also includes a link to the journal article for which the review was performed.
For a journal where peer review is fully open (the identity of the reviewer is known and the review is published), such as F1000Research, the ORCID record will be able to link directly to the peer review provided by the researcher.
The following data elements are recorded in the peer review activity section of an ORCID record
Information about the reviewer
Fields that include a person identifier to describe the person who performed the review and their role in the review process (for example, chair, editor, reviewer, organiser etc).
The review
What kind of review was it and does it have an identifier (such as a DOI). The date of the review is also recorded as what type of item was reviewed.
The subject
Fields to descripbe the subject of the review - for example, the paper, grant or other item. If the peer review is blind, this information can be omitted
The organisation
Fields that include an identifier for the organisation that requested the peer review activity. This could be a publisher, association or a funder. The city, region and country of the organisation can also be recorded.
This slideshow gives an idea of how Publons intend to integrate peer review activity with ORCID profiles.