The Unified Scholars Platform (USP) is an independent peer review and scholarly publishing platform. It allows scholars to do peer review and editing services among themselves, without going through the big publishers.

How it works

We have digitized and automated the entire scholarly publishing process, and deployed them in one web platform.

You:

1.   Register as guest within any journal/field of your choice.
2.   Submit research manuscripts to that journal/field.
3.   One editor and two peer reviewers would commit to evaluate your paper. And twenty five (25) days are allowed.
4.   Editor performs initial assessment (within first 5 days); if successful.
5.   Editor and peer reviewers proceed to evaluate paper and submit feedbacks.
6.   The digital feedbacks are collated and the platform decides (acceptance, revision or rejection), and notifies author.
7.   Author revises paper and resubmits.
8.   Revised papers are checked for completeness and quality.
9.   Digital feedbacks for revised manuscripts are collated again and platform makes the decision.
10.   Accepted manuscripts are immediately available for download by publishers and scholars
11.   Editors and peer reviewers get paid from the article processing charge.
12.   Publishers get to work to publish

Description

Unified Scholars Platform (USP) is the digitization and integration (in one platform) of the entire scholarly publishing process. It is an abstraction of the hitherto complex scholarly publishing process, and is intended to eliminate the pains, frustrations, delays and bias; and make scholarly publishing a fair, efficient and pleasant experience for scholars.

The platform accepts manuscripts and guides them through a computer-controlled peer review process, where editors and peer reviewers work digitally with clicks, on novel graphical user interfaces (GUI) which simplify their works and make the process interactive and efficient. The GUIs show all submitted manuscripts, their journey through peer review, their current status, their results/performance, their feedback reports, etc., in a transparent system that is open to every scholar. From manuscript submission, to editorial checks, to peer review, to feedback reports, to manuscript resubmission, to second peer review, and on and on, until acceptance or rejection of the manuscript -- all those steps of the process are controlled by the platform's algorithm in a seamless way devoid of any bottlenecks. The peer review is double blind, every user on the platform is anonymous, and all personal information are encrypted. No user is able to guess what country a manuscript has come from, who authored it or who would review it. The platform also decides the acceptance or rejection of manuscripts, based on feedback reports, which enhances fairness and equity. Accepted manuscripts are seen by contractors (independent publishers) who immediately get to work and publish in our Unified Journals, according to our Terms which guarantee free/open access and which also guarantees the rights of every author.

Authors pay an article processing charge (APC) after submission, some of which is used to pay editors and peer reviewers. Yes, I repeat, peer reviewers and editors are paid for each manuscript they evaluate. Since reviewers and editors work digitally, the platform automatically credits their wallets for each work they do, and they can withdraw their money through our payment partners.

To try the service, every user needs to register on the Unified Scholars Platform (USP). After registration and approval, users login and land on their respective dashboards. The dashboard contains about ten (10) functionalities of the platform, including a submission and resubmission system, a peer review system, a publisher system and a unified repository. The peer review page is sophisticated. It allows editors and reviewers evaluate manuscripts by clicking buttons. This is as easy as it gets. Click the relevant button, evaluate and submit. The platform's algorithm does the rest; it runs and controls the peer review process; makes decisions on each manuscript; and integrates the workflow. The publisher page shows the peer review performance of each manuscript; and the feedback window shows all feedbacks a manuscript has received. Publishing companies have back access to the platform, where they can collect accepted manuscripts and proceed with publication.