Stephen Chaudoin of Harvard’s Department of Government, lamenting the traditional academic journal publishing process—which can take years—notes that “you only get so many bites of the apple with journals.” But Chaudoin is finding that IQSS’s Magaro Peer Pre-Review Program, or PPR, is dramatically changing the calculus by improving papers before they are ever submitted to journals.
Chaudoin first used PPR in 2021 to bridge a gap in the publication process and improve the chances that his research would be disseminated. Within a few short weeks—the amount of time it took to receive his first round of feedback from a wider community of peers outside his immediate network—he quickly came to see the PPR process, as well as the program itself, as “a way to get well-positioned to be published” in a competitive space where “journals are having trouble getting reviewers.”