Reviewer Recognition Programs

A reviewer recognition program is a formal mechanism -- run by a publisher, a cross-publisher platform, or a professional society -- that creates a documented, and often verifiable and portable, record of a researcher's peer review activity. It exists because manuscript peer review is, by scholarly-publishing convention, unpaid, uncredited, confidential volunteer labor: an editor solicits a review, the reviewer submits comments, and outside the editor's own records nothing else normally happens. A reviewer recognition program is anything that closes that gap with a verifiable artifact -- a certificate, a platform-logged review history, or a portable credit entry -- that the reviewer can point to, as distinct from an informal 'thank you' with no lasting or checkable record.

ByCASRAI Editorial Board

· Last updated 23 Jul 2026

Worked examples

Is an instance

Web of Science Reviewer Recognition Service -- Clarivate's current name for the platform long known as Publons (Clarivate acquired Publons in 2017). Reviewers opt in and, with an editor's or publisher's participation, build a verified review history that can be exported, with the reviewer's explicit permission, to their ORCID record via the ORCID Member API -- ORCID's own record model does not allow reviewers to self-enter peer review credit directly.

Is an instance

Elsevier Reviewer Hub -- issues downloadable Reviewer Recognition certificates and, for many participating journals, grants reviewers 30 days of complimentary ScienceDirect and Scopus access after a completed review.

Is an instance

Wiley's Annual Peer Reviewer Certificate Program -- issues a personalized certificate to reviewers across more than 1,000 Wiley journals each year; some Wiley journals separately offer Continuing Medical Education (CME) credit for completed manuscript reviews.

Looks similar, but isn't

Not an instance

A journal's annual editorial-page list thanking reviewers by name, with no certificate, platform record, or exportable credit the individual reviewer can retain or verify later -- genuine acknowledgment, but not a program in the operational sense used here, since nothing persists as the reviewer's own artifact.

Not an instance

NIH honoraria paid to grant/study-section peer reviewers under the Secure Payee Reimbursement System -- this is direct monetary compensation for grant application review, structurally distinct from the unpaid-labor problem that journal-manuscript reviewer recognition programs address, and specific to funding peer review rather than journal peer review.

A reviewer recognition program is a formal mechanism — run by a publisher, a cross-publisher platform, or a professional society — that creates a documented, and often verifiable and portable, record of a researcher’s peer review activity. It responds directly to a structural feature of scholarly publishing: manuscript peer review is normally unpaid, uncredited, confidential volunteer labor performed as a professional courtesy, not a compensated service. A program closes that gap with an artifact the reviewer can point to — a certificate, a platform-logged history, or a portable credit entry — rather than leaving recognition as an informal, unverifiable ‘thank you.’

Why reviewer recognition programs exist

Peer review underpins the entire journal publishing system, yet a completed review typically produces nothing the reviewer can show a hiring, promotion, or funding committee: the manuscript, the reviewer’s own comments, and the editor’s decision all normally stay confidential. That mismatch — essential, time-consuming service work with no durable record — is the specific problem reviewer recognition programs are built to solve, and it is the same mismatch that broader research-assessment reform initiatives point to when they argue peer review deserves formal credit alongside publications.

Types of reviewer recognition programs

Cross-publisher verified platforms

The largest is the Web of Science Reviewer Recognition Service, Clarivate’s current name for the platform long known as Publons (Clarivate acquired Publons in 2017 and has since folded it into the Web of Science ecosystem; the Publons brand and standalone site have been retired in favor of Web of Science Reviewer Recognition / Web of Science Academy). Participating journals and publishers verify a reviewer’s activity on the platform, building a review history that — with the reviewer’s explicit, opted-in permission — can be pushed to their ORCID iD record via the ORCID Member API. This distinction matters operationally: ORCID’s own documentation is explicit that peer review entries cannot be self-asserted by the researcher the way a Works or Employment entry can — they must be pushed by a trusted convening organization (the journal, publisher, or a recognition service acting with that organization’s authorization), grouped under a group tag with a completion date and review-group ID.

Publisher-specific certificate and access programs

Individual publishers run schemes layered on top of, or independent from, cross-publisher platforms. Two widely used examples:

Elsevier Reviewer Hub lets reviewers download Reviewer Recognition certificates and see an overview of their review activity; for many participating journals, a completed review also earns 30 days of complimentary ScienceDirect and Scopus access. (See CASRAI’s guide to Elsevier’s peer review models and Editorial Manager for how this fits into Elsevier’s broader review workflow.)
Wiley’s Annual Peer Reviewer Certificate Program issues a personalized certificate, customized to the journal, to reviewers across more than 1,000 Wiley journals each year; some Wiley journals separately offer Continuing Medical Education (CME) credit for completed manuscript reviews.

These publisher-level schemes are typically journal- or publisher-specific acknowledgements rather than an independently verified, cross-publisher record — useful supporting evidence for a reviewer’s own CV or annual review, but not equivalent to a third-party-verified history a hiring committee can independently check.

Connection to research-assessment reform

Reviewer recognition programs sit inside a larger argument made by research-assessment reform initiatives — notably DORA (the San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment) and CoARA (the Coalition for Advancing Research Assessment) — that hiring, promotion, tenure, and funding decisions should credit the full range of scholarly contributions, not citation-based journal metrics alone. That range explicitly includes service work such as peer review, editorial roles, mentoring, and data curation, alongside authored outputs. Reviewer recognition programs are the practical infrastructure underneath that principle: without some verifiable artifact, a promotion or tenure committee has nothing to point to when a candidate claims peer review as a scholarly contribution. This is also the same gap CRediT-adjacent thinking about peer reviewer contribution addresses at the level of an individual role taxonomy, rather than a platform or certificate.

What a reviewer recognition program is not

It is not payment. Journal-manuscript peer review remains, by near-universal convention, unpaid volunteer service; recognition programs create documentation and non-monetary benefits (certificates, database access, ORCID-exportable credit), not compensation. This is a different mechanism from the honoraria some funders pay to grant/study-section peer reviewers (for example, NIH’s Secure Payee Reimbursement System for study-section review), which is direct payment for funding-application review, not journal peer review, and not a recognition program in this sense.

Related terms

Use in your systems

JATS XML <role> element

xml

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Schema.org DefinedTerm (JSON-LD)

json

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