 | This article needs to beupdated. Please help update this article to reflect recent events or newly available information.(January 2024) |
 | |
| Discipline | Biology,medicine |
|---|---|
| Language | English |
| Edited by | |
| Publication details | |
| History | 2013–present |
| Publisher | PeerJ |
| Frequency | Upon acceptance |
| Yes | |
| License | CC BY |
| 3.061 (2021) | |
| Standard abbreviations ISO 4 (alt) · Bluebook (alt) NLM (alt) · MathSciNet (alt  ) | |
| ISO 4 | PeerJ |
| Indexing CODEN (alt) · JSTOR (alt) · LCCN (alt) MIAR · NLM (alt) · Scopus · W&L | |
| ISSN | 2167-8359 |
| OCLC no. | 793828439 |
| Links | |
PeerJ is anopen accesspeer-reviewedscientificmega journal covering research in thebiological andmedical sciences.[1] It officially launched in June 2012, started accepting submissions on December 3, 2012, and published its first articles on February 12, 2013.[1]
In 2024, the firm was acquired by traditional research publisherTaylor & Francis.[2]
PeerJ was originally published by a company of the same name that was co-founded by CEO Jason Hoyt (formerly atMendeley) and publisher Peter Binfield (formerly atPLOS One),[3][4][5] with initial financial backing of US$950,000 fromO'Reilly Media's O'Reilly AlphaTech Ventures,[6] and later funding fromSage Publishing.[7]
The firm is a member ofCrossRef,[8]CLOCKSS,[9]ORCID,[8] and theOpen Access Scholarly Publishers Association.[10] The company's offices are inCorte Madera (California, USA), andLondon (England, UK). Submitted research is judged solely on scientific and methodological soundness (as atPLoS ONE), with a facility forpeer reviews to be published alongside each paper.[11]
PeerJ uses abusiness model that differs from traditional publishers – in that no subscription fees are charged to its readers – and initially differed from the major open-access publishers in thatpublication fees were not levied per article but per publishing researcher and at a much lower level.[12]PeerJ also offered apreprint service namedPeerJ Preprints (launched on April 3, 2013[13] and discontinued in September 2019).[14] The low costs were said to be in part achieved by usingcloud infrastructure: bothPeerJ andPeerJ Preprints run onAmazon EC2, with the content stored onAmazon S3.[15]
Originally,PeerJ charged a one-time membership fee to authors that allowed them—with some additional requirements, such as commenting upon, or reviewing, at least one paper per year—to publish in the journal for life.[16]
Since October 2016,PeerJ has reverted toarticle processing charges, but still offers the lifetime membership subscription as an alternative option. The current charge for non-members publishing a single article inPeerJ is $1,195.00, regardless of the number of authors. Alternatively, the life-time membership permitting one free paper per year for life is $599 per author (basic membership), two per year for $699 (enhanced membership), or five per year for $799 (premium membership).[17] It may sometimes be cheaper to pay the per publication charge than paying membership fees for all authors.
In May 2023,PeerJ introduced Annual Institutional Memberships as an alternative to article processing charges.[18][19]
In 2024, PeerJ was acquired by traditional research publisher Taylor & Francis.[20] The announcement suggests that Taylor & Francis will invest in PeerJ to support it to develop and innovate at greater scale.
The journal is abstracted and indexed inScience Citation Index Expanded,PubMed,PubMed Central,Scopus,Web of Science,Google Scholar, theDOAJ, theAmerican Chemical Society (ACS) databases,EMBASE,CAB Abstracts,Europe PubMed Central,AGORA,ARDI,HINARI,OARE, theProQuest databases, andOCLC.[21] According to theJournal Citation Reports, itsimpact factor increased from 2.118 in 2017 to 2.353 in 2018.[22]
In April 2013The Chronicle of Higher Education selectedPeerJ CEO and co-founder Jason Hoyt as one of "Ten Top Tech Innovators" for the year.[23]
On September 12, 2013 theAssociation of Learned and Professional Society Publishers awardedPeerJ the "Publishing Innovation" of the year award.[24]
On 3 February 2015, PeerJ launched a new journal dedicated tocomputer science:PeerJ Computer Science.[25]The first article on PeerJ Computer Science was published on 27 May 2015.[26]
On 6 November 2018, PeerJ launched five new journals dedicated tochemistry:PeerJ Physical Chemistry,PeerJ Organic Chemistry,PeerJ Inorganic Chemistry,PeerJ Analytical Chemistry, andPeerJ Materials Science.[27]
