ScholarPeer is a research journalism publication, a newsroom for people who love a good study whether it’s from a lab, a library, or a field site. Most of the studies come from peer reviewed journals. Some come from think tanks and other research bodies that publish outside the journals. We translate the findings into plain language, quote the researchers directly, and link back to the original source every time.

ScholarPeer is edited by Founder and Editor-in-Chief Ben Sullivan, who oversees everything we publish. Soomi Lee, PhD, heads the social sciences. Dylan Callaghan leads culture and health.

What we do

Most research never reaches the people it affects. It sits behind paywalls, buried in dense academic prose, or filtered through press releases written to promote rather than inform. We sit in the gap between the study and the reader.

Every article starts with a specific piece of research. Most often that is a peer-reviewed paper. Sometimes it’s a report from a think tank, a government body, or another research organization that publishes outside the journals. A reporter reads the full document, reports what the research actually found, names the limits the authors themselves note, and cites the source so you can go straight to it. When a paper has a DOI, we link by DOI.

We tell you what kind of source a story rests on. Peer-reviewed research and grey literature are not the same thing, and we don’t blur the line. When an article is based on a report that has not been through peer review, we say so.

We cover eight subjects: Culture, Economy, Environment, Health, Mind, Politics, Science, and Society. Each subject has its own archive with a short description of what it holds.

How we are different

We are journalists, not a research group and not a lab. We don’t conduct studies. We don’t review manuscripts or decide what gets published in academic journals. Our job is reporting: reading the work, checking it against the evidence, and explaining it clearly.

Three rules shape every piece:

We report the study, not the spin. If a finding is preliminary, small, or contested, we say so.
We quote researchers verbatim. When we attribute a statement to a scientist, those are their words.
We cite the source. Every article links to the research it is based on. When the source is a peer-reviewed paper with a DOI, we link by DOI. When it is grey literature, we say so and link to the report.

Contact

Story tips, corrections, and general inquiries: [email protected]