PREreview is excited to announce our next round of community design sprints. This time, we’ll explore how PREreview might best develop a structured dataset review workflow as part of our efforts in 2025 to expand the types of early research outputs our users can review on PREreview.org.
Recent federal policy changes in the United States (US) have sought to limit funding - and even researchers’ speech - severely. These policy changes have harmed domestic research and eroded support from the US federal government for related work abroad. At PREreview, one of our many concerns about these ongoing challenges is the loss of data necessary to continue research that fuels peoples’ livelihoods, happiness, and well-being. Data drives opportunity - it helps us know what works, what we can do, and how we can help.
While we do not host datasets, we do want to contribute to the historical record of their existence to make it more difficult for endangered research data to be entirely erased as a consequence of US federal policy changes and anticipatory obedience from individuals and institutions complicit with - or fearful of the consequences of - those policy changes.
In assessing what we can do, we have decided to accelerate our work to allow users to review multiple kinds of early research outputs on PREreview.org, and we’re starting with datasets, not only in response to US federal policy changes, but also out of a sense of curiosity, joy, and possibility. In particular, we are inspired by publishers like Curvenote that are incorporating datasets in “live” preprints that include things like dynamic figures and interfaces for computational notebooks that run on datasets integrated with those preprints.
Our parallel hopes are to add to the historical record of datasets’ existences and to make it easier than ever to review datasets - those published alone and those manipulable within “live” preprints - as early research outputs integral to preprints, our first organizational love.
If you are a researcher who loves data, a practitioner who depends on data to inform best practice, or another expert with lived experience regarding the importance of data to research, the continuation of open knowledge, and human well-being, please join us for one of our next community design sprints.
These sprints are collaborative community calls during which we at PREreview pose prompts and questions for community members to discuss together so we can learn what’s most valuable to them in the design of a dataset review workflow. We'll ask questions like:
- What are the key elements of a dataset review?
- How should different qualities of a dataset be evaluated?
- What human kinds of feedback are most helpful in addition to more purely mathematical or technical ones?
We can’t wait to find out!
Please click on one of the links below to register for a call. We’re offering the call twice, so you only need to attend one of the two calls if you’d like to participate.
- Dataset review community design sprint 1 - Wednesday, 2 April 2025, 9 AM ET/14:00 GMT
- Dataset review community design sprint 2 - Wednesday, 2 April 2025, 9 AM PT/12 PM ET/17:00 GMT
Whenever and wherever possible in the world, we provide US$30 honoraria for active community design sprint participants in gratitude for their time and contributions.
We’re so thankful for your help and we cannot wait to begin this work with you. Please invite your colleagues and fellow data lovers!
Stay connected
Remember, you can keep up with all the latest from PREreview - and how we’re working to deliver even more community-led improvements - by subscribing to our newsletter, joining our Slack community, and following us on social media platforms like Bluesky and LinkedIn.
And if you have any feedback, questions, or suggestions for us about prereview.org, you can set up a user research chat with our Head of Product, Chad Sansing. Click here to sign up for a chat. If you can’t find an available appointment time that fits your schedule, please email Chad to arrange a call. Whenever possible, we compensate interviewees.
Again, we’re so excited to begin this work and can’t wait to support the review of additional early research outputs vital to open knowledge, the scholarly publication process, and, most importantly, our community members.
