We’re excited to announce the launch of our new, modular review workflow for datasets on PREreview.org!
Since April, we’ve been working with community members to develop the first of our new review workflows dedicated to open peer review of modular research outputs. These outputs include objects such as datasets, dynamic figures, and computational notebooks—research outcomes that sometimes stand alone, although they are also often and increasingly part of dynamic, web-first publications such as those on Curvenote.
After an initial community design sprint, we drafted key questions for open dataset review that we then shared back to design sprint participants for feedback and refinement. We also invited members of the Data Rescue Project to give us input on questions specifically related to issues like datasets’ preservability, fidelity, and versioning.
With that feedback at the front of our minds, we released an early version of the open dataset review workflow to our sandbox site for testing and monitored for feedback.
We’ve now released the open dataset review workflow to our production site, PREreview.org for all interested researchers, other practitioners and experts, and people with lived experience in datasets’ topics to use. We’ve begun with support for Dryad, a popular data publication platform. You can request reviews of Dryad datasets and review those datasets right now just as you would for any preprint from preprint servers we support.
We’ll add support for other data publication platforms as community members’ requests come into use through the usual channels such as help@prereview.org and the PREreview Community Slack.
It’s our hope that this new open dataset review workflow will encourage even more researchers and expert reviewers to participate in open peer review, as well as in open modular research and publication, especially in web-first formats.
We also hope that this workflow helps preserve datasets’ historical records and provides review-based reference points for datasets that are imperiled by threats to open knowledge.
As with preprint reviews, reviews of datasets will also receive DOIs and be able to be cited and otherwise linked to through those persistent identifiers.
Throughout the rest of 2025 and 2026, we’ll be adding more open, modular peer review workflows to PREreview.org in collaboration with our community members, partners, and a modular review working group stewarded by PREreview and the Continuous Science Foundation that launches in 2026. Please contact us if you’d like more information about participation.
In the meantime, please visit PREreview.org, click on the “Review a dataset” link and send us your feedback!
Thank you to all of our community members who contributed to the development of this workflow and all the pieces of PREreview.org you’ve shaped over the years!
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Keep up with all the latest from PREreview - and future modular review workflows - by subscribing to our newsletter, joining our Slack community, and following us on social media platforms like Bluesky and LinkedIn.
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.
Check out the new open dataset review workflow and let us know what you think!
About the author(s)
Chad Sansing lives and works in central Virginia. When he’s not gaming, reading, walking, or spending time with family, you can find him working on PREreview.org alongside trusty officemate and chief canine officer, Sleepy the Dog.
Chris Wilkinson is based just outside of Cambridge, UK. He spends his days building the technology behind PREreview.org, sketching, talking about sketching, watching sketching videos, and playing Minecraft and Lego with his kids. He’s occasionally joined by Carrot the Cat, though mostly when he wants to be let outside.
