If you are a Web of Science user, you may have noticed the addition of a Publons tab near the top of the Web of Science interface. Publons is a platform to track, share, and receive recognition for your peer reviews. The Publons platform integrates into ORCID, which allows you then to populate your ORCID scholarly profile with peer review data. Registration for a Publons account is free and if you have an ORCID, you can register with your ORCID credentials. After creating your Publons profile, peer reviews are added and verified various ways depending on the relationship of the publisher to Publons.  For example, some publishers will send peer-review data directly to Publons in an automated workflow, while other publishers require a manual process such as sending Publons the confirmation e-mail you receive after completing a peer-review.

Here are a couple of Publon profiles from faculty members at The University of Alabama:

https://publons.com/author/195591/ian-m-mcdonough#profile

https://publons.com/author/1231001/laura-morett#profile

The review information displayed on the Publon profile varies by publisher. Some publishers allow the actual text of the review to be publicly displayed such as PLOS One, while others like RSC Advances only allow the Journal title to be displayed. You can browse the individual Publon Journal policies here.

Publons is an interesting platform and one certainly worth exploring more as peer review is an activity generally not visible to the public. As more scholars create Publon profiles, we may even start to see integration into information databases.