Journal-independent evaluation of impactful research
The Unjournal is making research better by evaluating what really matters. We aim to make rigorous research more impactful and impactful research more rigorous.
Today's research evaluation process is out-of-date, discourages innovation, and encourages rent-seeking. We provide open, rigorous evaluation, focused on what's practically important to researchers, policy-makers, and the world. We make it easier for researchers to get feedback and credible ratings of their work.
We currently focus on quantitative work that informs global priorities, especially in economics, policy, and social science.
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Research papers and projects
Our latest evaluations
Do Celebrity Endorsements Matter? A Twitter Experiment Promoting Vaccination In Indonesia
This work seems important methodologically and practically, both for understanding the effect of social media (and perhaps ‘polarization’ as well) and for health and other interventions involving debiasing and education (e.g., Development Media International).
Both evaluators rate the paper highly, giving overall ratings of 80 and 90, and stating that the paper ‘should be’ published in a ‘top tier (generalist)’ journal, or a tier just below this (near-top or top-field). Both have engaged seriously and substantively, including critiques of the econometrics and identification strategy. The second evaluation also provides a range of large and small specific suggestions for robustness checks, improved exposition, and more.
The Environmental Effects of Economic Production: Evidence from Ecological Observations
The evaluations are very positive overall, and both evaluators agree that is highly relevant to Global Priorities. They also agree that the authors address the limitations of the datasets rigorously, and that the analyses are well-considered and robust. Some modest restructuring of the paper is proposed to increase readability. In addition, the evaluators propose some additional analyses that could potentially bolster some of the findings - specifically, they propose that the authors might examine the heterogeneity of the pollution regulation-biodiversity association; to potentially also assess impacts of productivity on bird taxa; and additional quasi-experimental analyses are suggested that could further the analysis of both the mechanisms (land-use policies, air pollution) explored in this study.