How It Works

NIHR Open Research publishes scholarly articles and other research outputs (e.g. documents) reporting any basic scientific, translational, applied and clinical research (including quantitative and qualitative studies) that has been funded (or co-funded) by the NIHR. Each publication must have at least one author who has been, or still is, a recipient of an NIHR grant. NIHR Open Research publishes content across Medical and Health Sciences, Public Health and Health Services, Clinical Sciences, Neurosciences, Oncology and Biological Sciences.

Articles must be original (not duplications). All research, including clinical trials, systematic reviews, software tools, method articles, and many others, is welcome and will be published irrespective of the perceived level of interest or novelty; confirmatory and negative results, as well as null studies are all suitable. See the full list of article types we accept for more information.

All articles are published using a fully transparent model; the authors are solely responsible for the content of their article. Invited peer review takes place openly after publication, and once peer review has been completed and the platform has been formally approved by bibliographic databases, articles that pass peer review will be indexed there.

NIHR Open Research is an Open Research platform: all articles are published open access under a CC-BY license; the publishing and peer-review processes are fully transparent; and authors are asked to include detailed descriptions of methods and to provide full and easy access to the source data underlying the results in order to improve reproducibility.

Documents are not peer reviewed and do not appear in bibliographic databases such as PubMed.

Article submissions to NIHR Open Research undergo a rapid initial check undertaken by the in-house editorial team before being published with the status ‘Awaiting Peer Review’. There is no Editor (or Editor-in-Chief) to make a decision on whether to accept or reject the article, or to oversee the peer-review process. NIHR Open Research has a small Advisory Board of leading experts across the fields covered by NIHR research grants, who provide strategic input.

The editorial team will ensure that the authors are eligible to publish on NIHR Open Research and that articles represent scholarly communications that adhere to author guidelines and the ethical and editorial policies, including data policies. The team will also check that the article is intelligible and written in good English so that it is suitable for peer review, and that its content can be fully assessed by invited peer reviewers and readers. If a submission fails the initial checks it will be returned to the authors to address the issues, and if they are not resolved satisfactorily the article will not be accepted.

Documents undergo a basic screen before publication.

Peer review of articles on NIHR Open Research takes place after publication; once the article is published, expert reviewers are formally invited to review under our open and transparent peer review model. To improve the consistency of definitions and terminology in peer review, NIHR Open Research uses the NISO standard terminology for peer review to summarise our peer review process as:

• Identity transparency: All identities visible
• Reviewer interacts with: Editor, other reviewers, authors
• Review information published: Review reports, submitted manuscript, reviewer identities
• Post publication commenting: Open

Identity transparency: Peer review at NIHR Open Research occurs on a published version of the article, with the authors’ full names and affiliations available to reviewers and readers. Peer reviewers’ names and affiliations are published alongside their peer review reports - if multiple people write a peer review report, they can all be named.

Reviewer interacts with: Peer reviewers are invited to review by the NIHR Open Research team, who also provide support to them throughout the process. Reviewers are also able to read any existing peer review reports for the article, and respond to them using the Comments section if they choose. Authors are encouraged to respond to peer review reports openly using the Comments section, however this is not mandatory. Authors must not contact peer reviewers directly, and we ask reviewers to notify us if this has occurred.

Review information published: The most recently published version of the article is the version currently undergoing peer review. When a peer review report is submitted, it undergoes an editorial check to ensure that it meets the peer reviewer Code of Conduct and is then published alongside the reviewers’ full names and affiliations. The peer review report is assigned a DOI, and is citeable independently of the article.

Post publication commenting: NIHR Open Research has a comment system that can be used for open academic discussion between the authors, reviewers, and readers. Comments should focus on the scholarly content presented in the article with which they are associated.

The Editorial team will identify and invite suitable reviewers, however authors are able to suggest their own reviewers (in line with our reviewer criteria) and nominate opposed reviewers if they wish. Authors can suggest reviewers who they know are experts in their fields, and we also provide a tool which uses an algorithm to suggest potential reviewers who have published on the topic presented in the article. Authors are asked not to contact peer reviewers directly about the peer review process.

Reviewers are given guidelines specific to each article type. They are generally asked to assess whether the research is scientifically sound, that is:

• whether the work is discussed appropriately in the context of the current literature
• whether suitable methods have been used
• whether sufficient information and source data have been provided to allow others to repeat every step of the work
• whether the conclusions are supported by the findings.

In addition to their written report, reviewers also select one of three statuses:

• Approved: No or only minor changes are required. This means that the experimental design, including controls and methods, is adequate; results are presented accurately and the conclusions are justified and supported by the data.
• Approved with Reservations: The reviewer believes the paper has academic merit, but has asked for a number of small changes to the article, or specific, sometimes more significant revisions.
• Not Approved: The article is of very poor quality and there are fundamental flaws in the article that seriously undermine the findings and conclusions.

The approval status is shown on the article, together with the reviewer's name and affiliation, and the detailed report supporting the status they selected.

If an author decides to revise the article to address the reviewers' comments, all reviewers are invited to provide additional reports on the new version; reviewers are especially encouraged to re-review if they had originally given an ‘Approved with Reservations’ or ‘Not Approved’ status, as they are asked to assess whether the work has been sufficiently improved to achieve a better approval status.

Reviewers who have been invited to assess a specific article may find these at-a-glance reviewer guidelines helpful, including an explanation of the benefits of reviewing for NIHR Open Research.

We strongly encourage authors to address the reviewers' criticisms by publishing revised versions and/or by adding author comments to the peer review reports.

All versions of an article are publicly available and can be independently cited, but the latest version will be displayed as the default on NIHR Open Research. A short summary of the revisions is displayed at the start of each new version.

All articles are ‘living’, even after peer review is complete: authors can publish an updated version of their articles at any time if there have been small developments relevant to the findings.

The peer review status of an article is clearly indicated at all stages:

• Immediately on publication, and until the first peer review report is published, the article is labelled AWAITING PEER REVIEW - as part of the article title and in the Open Peer Review summary box on both the article HTML and PDF.
• As soon as a peer review report is published alongside the article, the current approval status is displayed. As additional reports are received, the approval status is updated.
• Once NIHR Open Research has been approved by bibliographic databases, articles that receive two ‘Approved’ statuses, or two ‘Approved with Reservations’ statuses and one ‘Approved’ status, will be indexed there.

NIHR Open Research articles are published under a CC BY license, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, and leaves the copyright of the article with the current copyright holder (usually the author or their institution). As the specific version of the CC BY license applied to specific content may change due to periodic updates, the license is shown below the article abstract.

Most documents are also published under a CC BY license, but other CC licenses may apply, as indicated for each research output’s published page under the image.

Data associated with NIHR Open Research articles (not documents unless specifically stated) are made available, where possible, under the terms of a Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication (CC0 license). This facilitates and encourages data re-use and helps prevent the problems of attribution stacking when combining multiple datasets each authored by multiple authors that use multiple different licenses.

Peer review reports that are published with a given article are available under the CC BY license.

Articles in NIHR Open Research can be updated and amended at any time post publication, but each version is independently citable with its own DOI (digital object identifier). The most recent version is displayed as the default. The citation can be found by clicking the Cite button on the article page.

Every article is indexed by the CrossMark Identification Service™, which summarizes the history of an article and any linked publications. Clicking on the CrossMark logo in the HTML or PDF of the article provides up-to-date information on the latest article version, as well as new peer review reports and any associated articles (which will be linked [threaded] together).

Standard citation approaches are insufficient for NIHR Open Research articles because:

• The reviewer status of an article will change after publication
• An article may have multiple versions following revision or update by the authors

After discussion with major indexing services and others, the traditional system of citation has been adapted to include an indication of the peer review status and the version of an article.

This citation includes two additional elements, placed in square brackets, immediately after the article title (to avoid them being accidentally removed on copying):

1. Article version number, for example version 1 for the first version, and version 2 for the next version, and so on.
2. Details of the peer review status, i.e. number of reviews that are ‘Approved’, ‘Approved with Reservations’, or ‘Not Approved’. The status will be ‘Awaiting Peer Review’ before the reviews are published.

An article should be cited like this:

Authors. Article title [version number; details of peer review status]. NIHR Open Res Year, Volume: Publication number (doi)

Documents have a permanent DOI (digital object identifier). The full citation can be found by clicking the Cite button.

Documents should be cited like this:

Authors. Document title. NIHR Open Res Year, Volume: Publication number (document) (doi)

Source datasets associated with NIHR Open Research articles are deposited in repositories that meet certain criteria. Articles include a "Data Availability" section outlining where the source data can be found, including the permanent identifier the dataset(s) have been assigned by the repository and a reference with details of how to cite the dataset(s).

Peer review reports on NIHR Open Research articles are published under a CC BY license. A DOI is assigned to every peer review report, so it can be cited independently from the article. The full citation can be found by clicking the Cite button next to each peer review report on the article page.

A peer review report should be cited like this:

Reviewer name(s). Peer Review Report For: Article title [version number; details of peer review status]. NIHR Open Res Year, Volume: Publication number (review doi)

We encourage constructive debate on articles published in NIHR Open Research.

To submit a comment about the article in general, either click the link to ‘Add a comment’ in the side bar or go to the end of the article page and click ‘Comment’. To comment on a particular reviewer report, click the link to read the report in the table in the side bar and then click ‘Respond’. You will be prompted to login to/register an account before you can comment. Comments are automatically labelled with your role, be it author, reviewer or reader.

Similarly, to comment on a document, go to the bottom of the page of the specific research output you want to comment on and click ‘Add your comment’.

When you're ready to submit your Comment, please ensure you've accepted the Terms and Conditions and then click ‘post’.