For reviewers

You sign in either by continuing with Google, or with a one-time code sent to your email. There is no password and no application to Peerclave.

Signing in creates a reviewer account. Before you can apply to a journal you complete a profile: your name and affiliation, the subspecialties you review in, a short account of your track record, and a set of declarations about confidentiality and the review format. You work through it a section at a time and can stop and come back.

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Coming soon. Peerclave is building its reviewer pool first, and journals are being onboarded now. Panel applications are not open yet. Signing in and completing your profile means you are ready the day they open, and reviewers who sign in before 1 April 2027 are recorded as founding reviewers.

When they open, you will see the journals on Peerclave listed by name and scope, and apply to the ones you want to review for. Your profile is shown to a journal only when you apply; no journal can see you, or contact you, before that.

You can add evidence of your experience if you want to, and none of it is required. You can match your public author record on OpenAlex, add links such as Google Scholar, and choose to show the journals you review for. Until a journal admits you it sees only counts and topics from your record, and the journals you chose to show, with nothing that names you. Your name, the link to your record and your profile links are shown once it has admitted you. Peerclave does not check any of it: it is your account of yourself, labelled that way, and each journal decides for itself.

The journal decides whether to add you to its panel. There is nothing to compare on price when you apply, because the price is set per manuscript rather than per journal.

Once you are on a journal's panel, its editors send you manuscripts. Each offer states the journal, the fee, and the deadline, and shows the abstract or the full text depending on the journal's policy. The fee is set for that manuscript and may reflect how quickly the review is needed. There is no negotiation and no bidding between reviewers.

You accept or decline. You are asked to decline where you have a conflict of interest, or where you cannot meet the deadline.

Payment is tied to submitting a complete review on time. It does not depend on whether the journal agrees with your conclusions, whether it accepts or rejects the manuscript, or whether the authors dispute your assessment.

Payouts are made through Stripe, by bank transfer, to reviewers in more than 100 countries. These include the UK, the EEA, the US, Canada, Switzerland, India, Egypt, Ethiopia, Türkiye and South Africa. Outside the UK your fee is paid in your local currency, converted from pounds at the exchange rate on the day, and the amount in pounds does not change. If your country is not on the list you can still sign in, build your profile and name the journals you review for. Tell us which country and we will email you when payouts open there.

Each manuscript has a deadline and a grace window set by the journal. A complete review delivered by the deadline is paid the full fee. One delivered within the grace window is paid a reduced fee. A review that misses the grace window is not paid, and the offer closes. Late and undelivered reviews also cost points.

A review is complete when every section of the structured format has been addressed. The format is shown to you at acceptance, and the submission form will not close with sections left blank. If a journal contends that a review is incomplete, Peerclave decides, against the format.

When a journal includes a revision round, and the authors return a revised manuscript, you are sent it once to assess against your original review, within a new deadline. That round is covered by the original fee. Any further revision, or a revision where the journal did not include one, is sent as a new offer with its own fee, which you accept or decline.

When a journal receives your review it leaves a rating out of five. The rating is required before the journal can close the manuscript, so every completed review is rated. Your profile shows the average and how many ratings it is based on.

The rating is about the review as a piece of work — its thoroughness, clarity, and usefulness to the editor — not whether the journal agreed with your recommendation.

Your profile carries a points total. You earn points for completing your profile, for setting up your payout account, for submitting reviews on time — more for submitting them early — and for referring colleagues who go on to review. Reviewers who sign in before 1 April 2027 receive a one-off founding-reviewer award.

Every reviewer has a referral link. When a colleague signs in through it they are recorded as your referral. You earn points when they sign in, again when they complete their profile, and again for every review they later complete on time. There is no cap, and nothing is deducted from anyone's fee — not yours and not theirs.

Points are lost for delivering an accepted review after the deadline — a set amount plus more for each day late — and considerably more for accepting a review and not delivering it.

Points will inform things like priority when manuscript offers are matched, a level shown next to your name to journals, and annual recognition for the reviewers who have contributed most. What they unlock is still being decided. They are never converted to cash.

We are asking researchers and clinicians how they experience peer review: how much they review, what makes them say yes or no, and what would improve it. It takes 2 to 3 minutes and you do not need to sign in.

Take the survey