It is often a test of resolve for researchers to go through peer review. No matter how successful you are as an academic researcher, your articles have probably been rejected by journals at least once, and you have probably wondered if your papers will ever find a home.

In the current system, researchers usually can’t see which papers were rejected and why. Furthermore, they can’t even see the reviews for the accepted papers in most journals. The lack of transparency means that we don’t know if potential personal biases can get in the way of what is supposed to be a merit-based process.

This is why I decided to build Jicount.com, a platform that allows researchers to upload milestones and activities associated with their papers. The goal of the platform is to provide a supportive space for researchers to engage with other researchers before and after the submission process. In the current version, users can upload multiple files associated with the following activities to their paper:

A researcher can upload slides of their presentation, working paper or an abstract associated with each activity of their paper. Since papers tend to evolve over time, a user can upload a different version of their papers by adding a new activity to the timeline. This timeline design also allows a researcher to upload (multiple) referee reports associated with each submission outcome. Other researchers can read about the critiques of the reviewers and understand why the editorial decision was made. The hope is that by bringing more transparency in this process, there is more accountability in this process.

The ability for researchers to share their papers’ path to a successful placement can help other researchers, especially those who are early in their career, to better understand the steps needed to arrive at publication. Often times, people only see the shiny line of publication in the CV of successful researchers but not the work behind. It takes both persistence and many revisions to arrive at a state ready for publication. Jicount hopes to make this process more translucent to encourage researchers to hang on and let them know that they are not alone.

To learn more: Jicount Why I built Jicount: Link Source code: Link