Organizations to collaborate in bridging the gap between academia and the publishing industry
(TORONTO, August 4, 2021) JMIR Publications, the leading Canadian open access publisher based in Toronto, today announced a new collaboration with Ryerson University, led by Dr Ebrahim Bagheri, Professor of Electrical, Computer and Biomedical Engineering. This collaboration will focus on piloting, testing, and developing an artificial intelligence (AI)–based peer-review system and will bridge the gap between academia and the publishing industry by working together to advance academic publishing.
“JMIR Publications has been an innovator in the open science and scholarly publishing industry for the past 20 plus years, looking at disruptive methods to increase the quality in the publication process and decreasing the time to go through it. The reviewer selection process can significantly impact the time and quality of the scholarly publication process, and we are continuously supporting and experimenting with innovative methods to identify and reward reviewers, further reduce turnaround times, and improve the quality of reviews,” says Gunther Eysenbach, Chief Executive Officer and Executive Editor at JMIR Publications. “We are excited about our collaboration with Dr. Ebrahim Bagheri on his Reviewer.ly initiative that explores how innovative AI methods will be applied to this process for faster and higher quality review and validation of research.”
Through this collaboration, we will explore ways to leverage data insights and AI in order to enhance the process of identifying, inviting, and engaging academic reviewers. The objectives of this project are to
- Ensure rigorous peer reviews in a more timely manner
- Enhance article matching based on reviewer expertise
- Automate reviewer assignments for peer-review articles
“At the Laboratory for Systems, Software and Semantics (LS3) at Ryerson University, we are excited about the new collaboration with JMIR Publications, which will explore the impact Artificial Intelligence can have on improving the speed and quality of the scientific peer-review process,” says Professor Ebrahim Bagheri, Principal Investigator for the Project and Professor of Electrical, Computer and Biomedical Engineering, at Ryerson University. “This collaboration creates a fertile environment to test and expand our Reviewer.ly technology.”
Alongside his role as the Program Director for the Computer Engineering program at the Department of Electrical, Computer and Biomedical Engineering at Ryerson, Dr. Bagheri is the Canada Research Chair in Social Information Retrieval and the NSERC Industrial Research Chair in Social Media Analytics. He is also a recent recipient of the $1.65 million NSERC CREATE grant on Responsible AI (www.responsible-ai.ca); a testament to his ongoing contributions to the field and affirmation, Dr. Bagheri is the right choice to be the principal investigator in this collaboration.
About JMIR Publications
JMIR Publications (www.jmirpublications.com) is a leading, born-digital open-access publisher of academic journals and other innovative scientific communication products that focus on medicine, health, and technology. Its flagship journal, the Journal of Medical Internet Research, is the leading digital health journal globally in terms of quality/visibility in the health services research and medical informatics categories, and the largest journal in the field.
About Ryerson University
Ryerson University is Canada’s leader in innovative, career-oriented education. Urban, culturally diverse and inclusive, the University is home to more than 46,000 students, including 2,900 Master’s and PhD students, 3,800 faculty and staff, and over 200,000 alumni worldwide. For more information, visit ryerson.ca.
