Pilcrow is an application that facilitates a new approach to the peer review process for scholarly communications.
Traditional peer review at academic journals serves a gatekeeping role, determining whether a piece is publishable or not; this decision comes after the piece is nearly complete. This type of peer review often proves hostile to new ideas, unproven authors, and unfamiliar audiences. The process can even be traumatic for those involved.
In contrast, Pilcrow provides an environment for a peer review practice with transparency, collegiality, and ongoing developmental conversations.
Pilcrow is founded on creating supportive and engaging experiences for authors, reviewers, and editors. It is structured to encourage peer review rooted in a shared commitment to improving the work through candid and collegial feedback. Pilcrow enables editorial teams to develop an inclusive, supportive space where ideas are explored and refined collaboratively.
Pilcrow provides
- A safe and private environment to conduct open peer review with trusted individuals hand-picked by a coordinator and/or editor.
- Support for a wide variety of file types. The types that Pilcrow accepts for submission include: csv, .docbook, .docx, .epub, .html, .latex, .md, .odt, .rtf, and .txt. Pilcrow also supports entering submission text directly for copying and pasting or drafting a submission in-app
- Review criteria that are defined by each publication and provide a focus for the review so that reviewers know what values or criteria to look for when reviewing a submission.
- An option for reviewers to select specific portions of a text to comment on or to provide comments on a submission overall.
- The ability for editorial teams the opportunity to invite, manage, and correspond with authors and reviewers.
- Exportable evidence of review upon completion of the review cycle to use as scholarly works of their own. Authors can make use of the peer review evidence to strengthen their papers, while reviewers can use the report of peer review activity as evidence of scholarly service engagement.
Pilcrow Features
Easy Interface for Uploading or to Cut/Paste a Document for Submission
Edit or Refine Your Document Prior to Submission
Give instructions, reminders, or other editorial support when opening/closing a document for review
Leave an overall comment on the review
Accessibility features such as font and text size adjustments as well as light/dark modes and
Documentation
Pilcrow is an open-source project. Documentation can be found at https://latest.docs.pilcrow.dev/guide/reviewing.html.
Give Pilcrow a Try!
Interested in trying Pilcrow out? We have an instance you can try out as an Author at https://release.pilcrow.dev/
If you are interested in learning more about running your own reviews in Pilcrow, please contact us. We’ll help you set up a review cycle!
Contact
Questions? Feedback? Want to Give Pilcrow a Try?
Funding
Pilcrow is a collaboration between MESH Research at Michigan State University and the Public Philosophy Journal at the University of Oregon.
The project is supported by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation (Grant #G-1910-07239).