Publons
Publons was a commercial website that provided a free service for academics to track, verify, and showcase their peer review and editorial contributions for academic journals. It was launched in 2012 and was bought by Clarivate in 2017. It claimed that over 3,000,000 researchers joined the site, adding more than one million reviews across 25,000 journals. In 2019, ResearcherID was integrated with Publons. Publons produced a verified record of a person's review and editorial activity for journals, which could be downloaded to include in CVs, funding and job applications, and promotion and performance evaluations. Publons' business model was based on partnering with publishers. Background Publons was founded by Andrew Preston and Daniel Johnston to address the static state of peer-reviewing practices in academic research publishing, in view of encouraging collaboration and speeding scientific development. The Publons name was an homage to the "publon", the "minimum unit of publishable material". The company was registered in New Zealand and had an office in London, UK. It was acquired by Clarivate Analytics in 2017. Services Publons also provides: tools for publishers to find, screen, contact, and motivate peer reviewers; data and publications about global peer review behaviour; peer review training for early-career researchers;