Contact

Reaching the right resource matters more than reaching fast. This page covers how to get in touch with the editorial and research team at Peer Review Authority, what geographic scope the site serves, what details make a message actually useful, and what a realistic response timeline looks like.

How to reach this office

Peer Review Authority operates as a reference publication, not a journal or submission platform. Correspondence is handled through a single editorial inbox, which keeps responses consistent rather than scattered across a department structure that doesn't exist here.

The contact address is listed in the site footer. Messages sent there are read by a human — not triaged by a ticketing system or filtered through a form-to-spreadsheet pipeline. That's a deliberate choice. A message about a subtle factual error in an explanation of double-blind methodology deserves actual attention, not a template response and a ticket number.

For topic-specific inquiries — say, a question about how a particular field handles open peer review, or a factual discrepancy spotted in a published explanation — the subject line should name the specific page or topic. "Question" is not a subject line. "Factual query: open peer review in ecology" is.

Service area covered

The site covers peer review as practiced across the United States, with primary emphasis on federally funded research, US-based academic publishing, and the institutional frameworks that govern scientific publishing domestically. That includes NIH-funded grant review processes, NSF panel structures, and the editorial practices of journals operating under US-based scholarly publishers.

International peer review practices — for example, the UK Research Excellence Framework's evaluation panels or the European Research Council's review procedures — appear in the content where they provide meaningful contrast with US norms, but they are not the site's primary scope. The audience is researchers, graduate students, science journalists, and curious readers working within or alongside the US academic and scientific ecosystem.

Requests to cover peer review practices in jurisdictions entirely outside the US scope are noted but may not result in published additions. That's not a dismissal — it's an honest description of where the editorial focus sits.

What to include in your message

A useful message is a specific message. The following breakdown covers what helps and what doesn't:

1. The topic or page in question. If writing about something already published on the site, name it. If raising a new topic, describe it in one concrete sentence — not a paragraph of throat-clearing about why the topic is important.

2. The nature of the inquiry. There are roughly 3 categories of message this office receives: factual corrections (something published is wrong or outdated), content suggestions (a topic or angle not yet covered), and general research questions (asking for explanation or clarification). Each is handled differently. Naming the category up front saves a round of back-and-forth.

3. A named source, if relevant. Factual corrections carry more weight when they arrive with a citation — a named study, a specific journal, a named author or institution. "I think that's wrong" opens a conversation. "That claim contradicts the 2022 National Academies report on research integrity" closes one.

4. A contact address for reply. This sounds obvious. It is mentioned because a meaningful fraction of messages arrive without one.

What to leave out: lengthy preambles, apologies for writing, requests for the team to "keep up the good work." The substance of the message is the point.

Response expectations

Responses to factual corrections typically arrive within 5 business days. That timeline reflects the need to actually verify the claim being raised — which means checking primary sources, not just acknowledging receipt. If a correction checks out, the relevant page is updated, and the person who submitted it is notified.

Content suggestions are read and logged. Not every suggestion results in a published page, and it would be misleading to suggest otherwise. Topics are prioritized based on how well they fit the site's scope, whether reliable primary sources exist to support accurate coverage, and how the suggestion relates to gaps in what's already published. A suggestion that arrives with a specific framing — "there's no good explanation of registered reports as a peer review reform, and here are 3 named sources that could anchor it" — is substantially more likely to move forward than "you should write about problems with peer review."

General research questions are answered when the answer is something that can be given accurately and briefly. Questions that require extended original research or personal professional advice fall outside what this publication provides — not because they're unwelcome, but because answering them well would require resources the site doesn't have and shouldn't pretend to. In those cases, the response will say so plainly, and where possible will point toward a more appropriate resource.

One realistic note on volume: during periods when a major peer review story is circulating in the science press — a high-profile retraction, a new policy from a major funder — message volume increases substantially, and response times lengthen accordingly. The 5-business-day estimate assumes normal volume. It is not a guarantee.