NWO shares first-hand experience of publishing on MetaROR

Hans de Jonge, Jeroen Sondervan (Open Science NL, part of the Dutch Research Council NWO) and Bianca Kramer (Barcelona Declaration on Open Research) have published a detailed reflection on their experience using MetaROR, our open review platform for metaresearch, offering valuable insights for funders considering new ways of sharing their data and findings.

They chose to publish their study on the use of open metadata for Transformative Agreements through MetaROR, with the preprint hosted on MetaArXiv and the data/code shared on Zenodo.

The authors reported positively on both the speed and transparency of the process:

MetaROR delivered on speed. Within 13 weeks, we received two signed reviews from experts and the overall assessment of the handling editor confirming that our paper would be published (“curated”) on the platform along with the reviews.

They also valued the open, attributed reviews, which created “valuable context in reading and assessing our preprint” and the possibility of dialogue with reviewers.

The authors then submitted the article to Quantitative Science Studies (QSS), a MetaROR partner journal (partner journals commit to consider papers that have been reviewed on MetaROR for publication in the journal, by reusing the available open reviews). They received a decision within six weeks — far quicker than typical timelines — with the journal basing its verdict on the MetaROR reviews. The paper was accepted with only minor revisions, marking a significant proof of concept for the Publish–Review–Curate model.

Their reflections underline the value of open review platforms like MetaROR for funders who want to increase transparency, share more data and findings, and support systemic change in research communication.

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