eLife and PREreview are pleased to announce their continued partnership to engage more diverse communities of researchers in peer review.
The organisations formally teamed up last year following their collaborations on a number of initiatives. Their recent work has involved training courses for early-career reviewers and scaling the PREreview Open Reviewers programme to reach more research communities globally. In a joint project with AfricArXiv, Eider Africa and TCC Africa, eLife and PREreview co-created a peer-review training programme, called Open Peer Reviewers in Africa, inviting more researchers in this region to openly review preprints.
Now, as eLife moves towards a new ‘publish, review, curate’ model that puts preprints first, the organisations will increase their efforts to involve more early-career researchers, and researchers from communities that are traditionally marginalised within the peer-review process, in the public review of preprints. Their work will involve further integrating PREreview into Sciety – an application developed by a team within eLife to bring open evaluation and curation together in one place – and opening up new opportunities for more researchers to participate in public review.
Since 2019, PREreview hosts and maintains an open platform for research community-led preprint review. On the website, any researcher with an ORCID iD can request and share reviews to any preprint with a digital object identifier (DOI). In this partnership, eLife will support PREreview with the development of a more responsive and robust website that will leverage existing open infrastructure, thereby enhancing PREreview’s integration capabilities within the open preprint evaluation ecosystem. In further facilitating PREreview’s presence on Sciety, the teams will ensure that its preprint reviews are more visible on the application and will work on new functionalities to help PREreview and other organisations engage with the ‘publish, review, curate’ model.
Following the experience of co-developing the Open Peer Reviewers in Africa workshop with partners based in Africa – which involves a ‘train the trainer’ model to ensure the scalability and maximise the impact of the course – eLife and PREreview aim to partner with other like-minded organisations leading change within their research communities, to adapt and offer the programme to more communities of researchers around the globe. Together, they are working towards a future where researchers can engage in open preprint review in a process that is safe and rewarding to them.
Kora Korzec, eLife’s former Head of Communities, says: “We believe that research is greatly improved when diverse perspectives are brought to the table, and we want to provide a space where researchers from all backgrounds can provide open and constructive reviews of new findings posted as preprints. This work is crucial in our move towards a future that promotes openness, integrity and inclusiveness in science, and we’re delighted to continue our efforts with PREreview to achieve our common goal.”
“We look forward to continuing our work with eLife to support early-career researchers, particularly those who have been marginalised in scholarship, build more equitable partnership with other organisations active in the space, and offer opportunities to all researchers to learn, network, and be valued for the open contribution to preprint reviews,” adds Daniela Saderi, Co-Founder and Director of PREreview.
For more information about PREreview, visit https://prereview.org.
To read more about the Open Reviewers in Africa workshop, see https://elifesciences.org/for-the-press/ce2d4a3e/elife-prereview-and-partners-develop-course-to-involve-more-african-researchers-in-peer-review and https://elifesciences.org/inside-elife/30ce0914/open-peer-reviewers-in-africa-nominations-are-now-open-to-recruit-future-peer-review-trainers-across-the-continent.
And to read more about eLife’s direction towards the ‘publish, review, curate’ model, see https://elifesciences.org/inside-elife/e4638e4a/elife-latest-a-new-vision-for-transforming-research-communication.
Media contacts
Emily Packer
eLife
e.packer@elifesciences.org
+441223855373George Litchfield
eLife
g.litchfield@elifesciences.org
+441223855373
About
About eLife
eLife transforms research communication to create a future where a diverse, global community of scientists and researchers produces open and trusted results for the benefit of all. Independent, not-for-profit and supported by funders, we improve the way science is practised and shared. From the research we publish, to the tools we build, to the people we work with, we’ve earned a reputation for quality, integrity and the flexibility to bring about real change. eLife receives financial support and strategic guidance from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation, the Max Planck Society and Wellcome. Learn more at https://elifesciences.org/about.
About PREreview
PREreview is an open project fiscally sponsored by the non-profit organisation Code for Science and Society. Our mission is to bring more equity and transparency to the scholarly peer-review process. We design and develop open-source infrastructure to enable constructive feedback to preprints, we run peer review mentoring and training programmes, and we partner with like-minded organisations to put together events that provide opportunities for researchers to create meaningful collaborations and connections, defeating cultural and geographical barriers. Learn more about PREreview at https://prereview.org.
