Which Are the Tools Available for Scholars? A Review of Assisting Software for Authors during Peer Reviewing Process

Abstract

There is a large amount of Information Technology and Communication (ITC) tools that surround scholar activity. The prominent place of the peer-review process upon publication has promoted a crowded market of technological tools in several formats. Despite this abundance, many tools are unexploited or underused because they are not known by the academic community. In this study, we explored the availability and characteristics of the assisting tools for the peer-reviewing process. The aim was to provide a more comprehensive understanding of the tools available at this time, and to hint at new trends for further developments. The result of an examination of literature assisted the creation of a novel taxonomy of types of software available in the market. This new classification is divided into nine categories as follows: (I) Identification and social media, (II) Academic search engines, (III) Journal-abstract matchmakers, (IV) Collaborative text editors, (V) Data visualization and analysis tools, (VI) Reference management, (VII) Proofreading and plagiarism detection, (VIII) Data archiving, and (IX) Scientometrics and Altmetrics. Considering these categories and their defining traits, a curated list of 220 software tools was completed using a crowdfunded database (AlternativeTo) to identify relevant programs and ongoing trends and perspectives of tools developed and used by scholars.

Keywords

• peer-review
• information and communication technology
• ITC
• writing
• science policy