Dr Andrew Preston and Publons

Dr Andrew Preston was a MacDiarmid Institute PhD scholarship student under Principal Investigator Dr Ben Ruck from 2007 to 2009.

In 2012, Dr Preston and his colleague Daniel Johnston launched Publons, an online service to incentivise peer review by giving credit and recognition to researchers who review publications. Academics can track, verify and showcase their peer review and editorial contributions for academic journals. The Publons name is homage to the "publon", the "minimum unit of publishable material".

International data analysis company, Clarivate Analytics, acquired Publons in 2017, with Andrew staying on as managing director and employing 28 staff.

The website is now being used by more than 515,000 researchers who have undertaken 3 million reviews of more than 25,000 journals.

More information

• Publons Joins Clarivate Analytics: The Future of Peer Review - Publons blog, June 2, 2017
• Peer review is a thankless job. One firm wants to change that - The Economist, June 1, 2017
• Peer review is essential to good science – it’s time to credit expert reviewers - The Guardian, June 1, 2017
• Wellington startup Publons sold in multi-million deal - The National Business Review, June 14, 2017
• Publons pair get scientific publishing moving faster - NZ Herald, April 16, 2015
• Wikipedia - Publons