http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2021/04/fifteen-journals-outsource-peer-review-decisions

Some scholarly publishers have already outsourced operations like copyediting and printing. Now, 15 journals are outsourcing something central to science itself: the peer review process. The journals, which include BMJ Open Science and Royal Society Open Science, say they will accept articles reviewed by a nonprofit “peer community” organization.

It’s the first time that journals have guaranteed that they will accept the recommendations of another body with no further review, says Chris Chambers, a cognitive neuroscientist at Cardiff University and one of the founders of the peer review organization, called Peer Community In Registered Reports (PCI RR). The service—which PCI RR will provide free to authors and journals—will add to the existential questions facing journals, says Jason Hoyt, CEO of PeerJ, an open access family of journals that has signed up for the initiative. “What are you paying publishers to do, exactly?” he asks. For PeerJ, which is committed to low publishing fees, outsourcing peer review provides an opportunity to innovate, he says.