The Company of Biologists’ Fast & Fair Peer Review

Peer review is the quiet engine of scientific progress. It is rigorous, demanding, and essential – yet for many researchers it can also be slow, opaque, and frustrating. Fast & Fair is The Company of Biologist’s brand-new initiative to re-engineer that experience without sacrificing quality. Our role was to translate that ambition into a visual story that felt credible to scientists and accessible to the wider research community.

Visualising a publishing experiment

Biology Open’s Fast & Fair initiative is exactly that: a carefully designed experiment asking whether it’s possible to deliver high-quality peer review within seven working days of submission, while maintaining the journal’s established high standards. The early results are striking. In the first phase, all 20 manuscripts processed through the workflow received a first decision within the seven-day target. Those promising outcomes have led to a second phase, expanding the reviewer pool so more submissions can benefit.

Fairness, made explicit

What makes Fast & Fair distinctive is not just speed, but transparency and respect for reviewers. Contracted reviewers are compensated for reviewed manuscripts, provided their reports meet agreed quality and timeliness standards. Reviewers work to a structured review form aligned with Biology Open’s publication rubric and ethical guidelines, including confidentiality and competing interests. Editors routinely rate review reports and provide feedback where improvement is needed.

Storytelling for a research community

The Company of Biologists’ mission – to provide a home for all high-quality research regardless of perceived impact – shaped the tone of the animation. Fast & Fair exists because publication delays so often stem from the difficulty of securing reviewers, who are themselves busy researchers volunteering their time. By compensating reviewers and setting clear expectations, Biology Open is testing whether the system can be made more efficient, more transparent, and ultimately fairer.

The Fast & Fair film isn’t just an explainer; it’s an invitation – to authors to submit their work, to reviewers to join a growing pool, and to the wider community to imagine peer review done differently.

To find out more about The Company of Biologists’ Fast & Fair Peer Review please visit:

https://journals.biologists.com/bio/pages/fast-fair

Cambridge Filmworks

Cambridge Film Animation Content Video Productions

www.cambridgefilmworks.com