Intesa Sanpaolo supports ReviewerCredits, accelerating the development of the platform dedicated to peer reviewers

ReviewerCredits has obtained a convertible loan from the Intesa Sanpaolo Group through the Intesa Sanpaolo Innovation Center, which will support the company in accelerating its development.

The Covid-19 pandemic has brought to light the importance of careful evaluation of scientific data before they can be published in renowned and indexed journals: the so-called peer review process, aimed at ensuring authenticity, relevance and rigor of the results to avoid the spread of fake news, both in the medical scientific disciplines, as well as in the economic and humanities. It is precisely due to a hasty peer review process that even eminent journals such as the “New England Journal of Medicine” and “Lancet” have this year made blatant errors of assessment which they then had to correct.

Intesa Sanpaolo’s recent investment in reviewercredits.com should also be read in this light.
ReviewerCredits is an innovative start-up, spin-off of the Milano-Bicocca University, founded by professors Giacomo Bellani and Robert Fruscio in 2017, with the aim of creating a digital platform totally dedicated to the enhancement of peer review (the process of checking and validating articles by experts before publication by scientific publishers). Peer review is an indispensable job, but the work of researchers and reviewers does not currently receive any formal recognition. The increase in scientific research (+ 6.1% YoY) makes it difficult to find scientists willing to take on the role of peer reviewer (about 14 million reviews per year) and progress is slowed down by an inefficient and sometimes non-transparent system.
Reviewercredits.com is an international platform that guarantees reviewers a solid certification of peer review activities to be included in their curricula, to obtain visibility and career advancement, and, unique feature, virtual credits that can be spent on the platform. At the same time, it allows publishers to optimize the search for reviewers to entrust with the evaluation of articles.

“We found in Intesa Sanpaolo a receptive and attentive partner to the needs of innovative start-ups in our country. The fact that one of the major players in the European banking system has decided to support the development of ReviewerCredits is for us a source of pride and an opportunity for growth that the ReviewerCredits team has gathered with enthusiasm to position our innovative concept in the world. We are grateful to Intesa Sanpaolo for the sensitivity with which it has addressed such a specific issue”, says Valeria Mazzon, CEO and shareholder of ReviewerCredits.

The ReviewerCredits network now counts more than 10,000 reviewers and about 600 registered scientific journals. Over 12,000 revisions have been confirmed. It should be emphasized, precisely with a view to improving the reliability of science, that the peer-review certification has not been confirmed in about 5% of cases. A fact that underlines how reviewercredits.com can help clarify the peer-review process and contribute to the advancement of knowledge.