Created: 2025, Julius Harms, Freie Universität Berlin

Version: 22.09.2025. This plugin is in development and is not an official plugin by the RQC initiative.

Review Quality Collector (RQC) is an initiative for improving the quality of scientific peer review. Its core is a mechanism that supplies a reviewer with a receipt for their work for each journal year. The receipt is based on grading each review according to a journal-specific review quality definition.

This repository is a Janeway plugin that realizes a Janeway adapter for the RQC API, by which Janeway reports the reviewing data of individual article submissions to RQC so that RQC can arrange the grading and add the reviews to the respective reviewers' receipts.

API Documentation: https://reviewqualitycollector.org/t/api

• Once you register at RQC you will be provided with a Journal ID and API Key for your journal

• You can then enter these values on the plugin management page in Janeway

• The plugin will add a button "RQC-grade the reviews" by which editors can submit the reviewing data for a given submission to RQC in order to trigger the grading (this step is optional for editors)

• The editor may then be redirected to RQC to perform (or not) a grading right away

• The plugin will also intercept the acceptance-decision-making event and send the decision and reviewing data for that submission to RQC

• Should the RQC service be unavailable when data is submitted automatically at decision time, the request will be stored and will be repeated once a day for several days until it goes through

• Reviewers will be asked on their first review of the year for each journal if they want to participate in RQC.

• If they opt not to participate in RQC their identity will be anonymized and their review content will NOT be sent to RQC.

1. Clone this repository into the Janeway plugins folder (the newly created folder should be named rqc_adapter)

   cd /path/to/janeway/src/plugins
   git clone https://github.com/reviewqualitycollector/janeway-rqcplugin.git rqc_adapter

2. From the src directory run:

   python3 manage.py install_plugins rqc_adapter

3. Run the Janeway command for required migrations:

   python3 manage.py makemigrations

   python3 manage.py migrate

4. Install the cron job (activate your Python virtual environment first, if you’re using one):

   python3 manage.py rqc_install_cronjob --action install

5. Configure Cron Environment (Optional)

   If you already use cron with Janeway, your existing setup should work and you can skip this step. If this is your first cron job for Janeway, you must configure the cron environment so cron can access Python, Django, your database, and Janeway settings. Edit your crontab:

   crontab -e

   Add these environment variables at the top of the file (adjust values for your setup):

   SHELL=/bin/bash
   PATH=/usr/local/bin:/usr/bin:/bin
   PYTHONPATH= /path/to/janeway/src
   JANEWAY_SETTINGS_MODULE=core.janeway_global_settings
   
   # Database configuration (adjust for your environment)
   DB_VENDOR=postgres
   DB_NAME=janeway
   DB_USER=janeway-web
   DB_PASSWORD=janeway-web
   DB_HOST=janeway-postgres
   DB_PORT=5432

   After configuration, your crontab should include an entry like:

   0 8 * * * /path/to/janeway/src/manage.py rqc_make_delayed_calls

6. Restart your server (Apache, Passenger, etc)

• After registering with RQC, you will receive a Journal ID and an API Key for your journal.
• Enter both values into the form on the plugin management page in your journal.

1. Navigate to the Plugin Management page in the navigation pane
2. Select RQC Adapter
3. Fill out the form with the Journal ID and API Key provided by RQC

You will then be told if the given credentials could be validated by the RQC service.

RQC distinguishes between level 1, 2 and 3 editors. This is mapped to Janeway's editor types in the following way:

Level 1 editors: Section editors that are assigned to the submission

Level 2: Currently no roles in Janeway get labeled as level 2 editors.

Level 3: Editors that are assigned to the submission or that are involved in making the editorial decision regarding the submission via DraftDecisions.

Which editors are contacted for grading by RQC and when can be set on the RQC website.

See also: https://reviewqualitycollector.org/t/glossary#grading-importance-cannot-can-please-pleease

Janeway's "Conditional Accept" is transmitted to RQC as a minor revision request. This is because RQC only distinguishes between major and minor revisions.

Attachments uploaded by reviewers are not yet transmitted to RQC.

The plugin is currently still in development.

RQC's implementation status: https://reviewqualitycollector.org/t/past-and-future#status