Improving public peer review accessibility and reuse

There are a variety of ways publishers are exposing journal article peer reviews. The use of Crossref Peer Review Materials DOIs is increasing, in volume and the number of publishers registering them. We are also observing a small trend in preprint review groups assigning DOIs to their peer reviewer materials, via DataCite. However, incorrect labelling and poor metadata associated with these DOIs can prevent optimum reuse display, as well as the other benefits good metadata provide to authors and readers. At Europe PMC we are committed to supporting open science, and as an indexer of preprints as well as journal articles, we are in a good position to link journal-organised and preprint (community) peer reviews and reviews in progress via preprint review to these research outputs. However, there is no standard way of sharing review materials that an indexer like Europe PMC can use to expose this in a uniform and sustainable manner. We propose simple changes that would make a big difference to improve the context of peer reviews related to the articles they comment on.