Peer review for early-career researchers

Careers move faster than journals

Contracts end, grant calls close and hiring committees meet on fixed dates. A single round of journal review often takes months, and several rounds can take over a year. Researchers who studied publishing delays put it plainly: the delays “slow the dissemination of scholarship and can provide a significant burden on the academic careers of authors”.

How long peer review takes looks at the numbers.

Reviews a reader can check

A journal name is a proxy for a review nobody outside the journal sees. A peer-reviewed preprint shows the review itself: what the experts asked, and how you answered. A panel reading your application can judge the work on that, rather than on where it was accepted.

No publishing fee, and your copyright stays yours

Publishing on Unjournal is free: no article processing charge and no subscription. You pay once for the review, on delivery, with a money-back guarantee, and revision rounds are included. Like any preprint, the copyright stays with you. What article processing charges cost elsewhere.

Reviewers you would not have found

A new group leader's network is still small, and the people you know best are often your co-authors. Unjournal searches the global publication record for researchers whose own work is closest to each question your paper raises. You approve the anonymized shortlist, and nothing reaches a reviewer before you do.

How it works

1. Upload the paper (PDF or Word). It is read for the questions that need an expert, and nothing is sent to anyone yet.
2. Approve an anonymized shortlist of researchers whose own work is closest to those questions.
3. They review it double-blind, commenting on the passages that matter.
4. Revise; the same reviewers check the revision against their own comments.
5. Once at least two endorse it and none says “not yet”, you may publish it on the Unjournal preprint journal, with its reviews.