Researcher services instead of author services: change in Peerwith strategy

“Peerwith – marketplace for author services”, that is how we started Peerwith back in October 2015. Now it is July 2017, and this is what Peerwith stands for: “Peerwith – platform for expert-led researcher services”. This is a significant change in our strategy, with several elements that I’d like to explain in greater detail in this post.

Our mission is to be the global leading platform for researchers to connect with experts to improve the quality of their academic work. Through our transparent, peer-2-peer marketplace model, the researcher connects directly with peers who are experts in researcher services. Through our platform, we facilitate the exchange of high-quality, tailored researcher services. Services offered by experts and requests posted by researchers, can connect to collaborate at fair fees, for experts as well as researchers.

Our “clients” are researchers. Peerwith connects them with experts, giving them the opportunity to build lasting relationships and improve the quality of their academic work. Once these researchers become authors, Peerwith connects them with experts who can help improve the language of their manuscript, increasing the chance of getting published. We initially aimed at researchers as authors only, aiming to improve the academic language editing services industry, to support authors getting published in high impact journals and books.  Going forward our aim is to provide services to researchers in a broader context.

On Peerwith.com, you can select experts per researcher service. Language and editing services are the most commonly used services amongst researchers, also at Peerwith in 70% of the cases. But there are other publication support services like figure editing, but also rights and permissions. A category like journal guidance aims at researchers who do not know (yet) which journal they would like to publish in. Literature search comes in even more early in the writing process. The Peerwith platform features experts in all these categories and encourages researchers to seek help from experts for their specific publication needs.

We see a growing demand for services in data and statistics and we will grow the service offering in that category with consultancy, expert help in data analysis, expert guidance to write your data sharing plan, or to see if you are compliant with data mandates that apply for your research.

Last but not least, there are experts active on the platform that offer their services in career and funding related issues like funding application support or workshops and training.

So we are broadening our service offering from just author services to researcher services, all of them being expert-led. Peerwith does not offer these services ourselves, we just facilitate the platform to connect with experts directly, giving our clients the freedom to connect with the expert of their choice, at their agreed terms.

The second aspect in the change in strategy is the step from being a marketplace, to offering a platform. The majority of the researchers use Peerwith through partners like FEMS, Brill, Emerald, Hindawi and others. Besides landing pages and branded marketplaces, we also offer Integrated Solutions. Peerwith offers its partners customized researcher services solutions which can be fully integrated into a partner’s ecosystem. That is why Peerwith is no longer just a “marketplace”, but the smartest platform for researcher services.