Foundations of a Framework for Peer-Reviewing the Research Flow

Traditionally, peer-review focuses on the evaluation of scientific publications, literature products that describe the research process and its final results in natural language. The adoption of ICT technologies in support of science introduces new opportunities to support transparent evaluation, thanks to the possibility of sharing research products, even inputs, intermediate and negative results, repetition and reproduction of the research activities conducted in a digital laboratory. Such innovative shift also sets the condition for novel peer review methodologies, as well as scientific reward policies, where scientific results can be transparently and objectively assessed via machine-assisted processes. This paper presents the foundations of a framework for the representation of a peer-reviewable research flow for a given discipline of science. Such a framework may become the scaffolding enabling the development of tools for supporting ongoing peer review of research flows. Such tools could be “hooked”, in real time, to the underlying digital laboratory, where scientists are carrying out their research flow, and they would abstract over the complexity of the research activity and offer user-friendly dashboards.