Peer Communities In

The Peer Commuities In organization (PCI) and the Peer Community Journal, a diamond open access journal, have considerable overlap with The Unjournal model. They started out (?) as a "recommendation system" but now have established the PCI Journal to "publish unconditionally, free of charge, exclusively, immediately (as soon as possible) [and on an opt-in basis] . . . any article recommended by a PCI." .

Especially relevant to The Unjournal are these aspects of their program:

• The standard "recommender" model has an approved recommender volunteer to play the role of managing editor for a paper and make the decisions; authors are consulted to recommend reviewers.

  • This might bring up concerns about conflict of interest, e.g., I become "recommender" for a friend or for the stuff that supports my agenda.

• There are 17 "Peer Communities in" (i.e., research areas)—mainly in life sciences (some seem to have just started; there are no public preprints up).

• Authors must

• They (opt-in) "publish" the article rather than being an "overlay journal," to improve their indexing possibilities (but this is opt-in; you can also submit elsewhere and there are "PCI-friendly" journals).

• They depend on volunteer evaluations.

• Their evaluation is 0/1 and descriptive rather than quantitative.