Welcome to our March PREreview newsletter! Inside, we’ve got some important announcements and lots of Live Review-related learnings and opportunities.
PREREVIEW UPDATES
Not Optional- Essential.
2025 has already proven to be a year of difficult transitions and devastating decisions. We at PREreview stand firm in our commitment to building towards a present and future in which knowledge flows freely and equitably, unbound by systemic barriers or entrenched hierarchies.
In addition to restating our commitment to our values, we are sharing:
💥 What steps we have, are, and will be taking to respond
📄 A list of resources that we’ll be updating weekly, which you can find in our blog post here.
If you have resources you'd like us to share, or would generally like to talk further, please let us know at community [at] prereview.org.
Image created by Olly Costello. Olly Costello shared this image and other beautiful images with the public on the Art for Community page of their website in exchange for donations to one of the Abolitionist organizations listed. For this download PREreview donated to Dissenters.
AMAZING ANNOUNCEMENTS
Spanish Open Reviewer Toolkits
The Open Reviewers Toolkit has officially been published in Spanish! The toolkit consists of three guides to help reviewers with preprint peer review that is socially conscious and constructive. These guides can be used for students who are undertaking peer review for the first time, as well as experienced peer reviewers who are looking to continue to learn and widen their understanding of open peer review. And a huge thanks to all of our amazing community members, Pablo Ranea-Robles, Maria Sol Ruiz, and Juan Bizzotto, who helped translate these materials.
- Reviewer Guide: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.14825399
- Bias reflection guide: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.14845399
- Review Assessment Rubric: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.14845534
You can also find these resources at our website: prereview.org/resources.
Live Reviews: Who, What, Where, When, How, Why
Let's Learn about Live Reviews
Let's Learn about Live Reviews
Have you ever wondered if scholarly peer review could be done collaboratively, openly, and in dialogue with authors, reviewers, and other members of the research community? PREreview’s Live Reviews are for you! Check out our Let’s Learn about Live Review series- for our first installment, we shared an infographic, which can be also viewed as a one-pager, on HOW a Live Review works and what the process looks like!
If you're interested in seeing this process in real time and learning more about how to get involved, register for our upcoming Live Review on Wednesday, March 21 @ 15:00 UTC: bit.ly/review-together-march21
And make sure to follow us so you can continue Learning about Live Reviews 📓💭
PREreview x JMIR Publications
And speaking of Live Reviews, PREreview and JMIR Publications have been joining forces to improve scholarly peer review! To learn more about how we’ve partnered with JMIR to bring them to you, and how you can join researchers globally to improve a preprint together, check out our blog post here: bit.ly/collaborative-live-reviews and register to be part of our upcoming Live Reviews webinar, March 19 @17:00 UTC, here: bit.ly/LiveReview-webinar25.
COMMUNITY COLLABORATIONS
Community Spotlight: Janaynne and GET
Janaynne Carvalho do Amaral, a PREreview expert and previous Champion (2024 cohort), has been presenting open peer review workshops since 2023! The peer review workshops were an initiative delivered in partnership with the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign’s School of Information Sciences and Global Education and Training to pedagogy and data science scholars participating in the Bolashak Program.
Janaynne hosted workshops on how to review a research manuscript; how to evaluate a reviewer report; and how to participate in a preprint collaborative review, according to the needs of Bolashak fellows. Through these sessions, Janaynne was able to:
- support the participation of Bolashak fellows in preprint review & strengthening reviewer skills;
- understand the effectiveness and comprehension of peer review training materials, including PREreview open resources, by diverse groups; and
- learn that publishing in Kazakhstan may be different from those taught in the sources used to deliver the workshops.
It is because of incredible community members like Janaynne that we are building diverse and equitable communities for open research, scholarship, and communications! A huge thank you to Janaynne 🙂
Community Design Sprint Opportunity!
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 and the open building and exchange of knowledge, please join us at PREreview on April 2 for one of our next community design sprints! This time, we’ll explore how developing a structured dataset review workflow will allow us to expand the types of early research outputs our community can review on PREreview.org.
To learn more about what’s motivated us to hold this set of community design sprints and register for one of our two sprint sessions, check out our blog post.
Highlights from the Slack Community
- Daniela shared about the new IOI Fund for Network Adoption. Read more and express your interest in being supported by the fund here
- Vanessa shared C4DISC's toolkit for equity
- Daniela had the opportunity to meet two of our wonderful community members in-person (who are both 2025 Champions!)
- ORCID have released new work types that support a wider range of arts and humanities contributions!
- Janaynne shared about presenting and facilitating open peer review sessions in partnership with the University of Illinois' GETS program!
- Don’t forget to introduce yourself in the introductions channel, check out the various jobs-and-opportunities available, and take a look at where you can lend your expertise in our request-a-review channel
Events
Upcoming events
- Mar 19 - Live Review: Innovating Peer Review Through Open Collaboration webinar, register here
- Mar 21 - Upcoming Live Review with JMIR Publications, register here
- Mar 26 - ASAPbio Community Call, discussing Institutional Recognition of preprints with Michael Dougherty and Shubha Tole. Register here
- Apr 15- Application clinic for rOpenSci Champions Program 2025: In Spanish - virtual - join here
Recent events
- Feb 13 - Daniela, Vanessa, and Grace attended the Generative Conflict workshop with CZI - virtual
- Feb 21 - Live Review on ‘Discovery of Novel Inhibitors of HMG-CoA Reductase using Bioactive Compounds isolated from Cochlospermum Species through Computational Methods’ by Toba Olatoye - published review
- Feb 23-24 - Daniela gave a talk at the Institute of Open Science Practices 2025, a hands-on workshop happening in Denver, Colorado, US. - in-persom
- Mar 11 - Vanessa gave a talk at The Oxford Forum of Open Scholarship (OxFOS) - Oxford, UK - in-person
- Mar 12 - Daniela was featured in eLife's Community Voices podcast, episode 4 - virtual - listen/read here
- Mar 13 - Confronting injustice through Open Science, a symposium exploring how Open Science can help to fight injustice by centering decolonial and anticolonial Open Science initiatives - hybrid
Image Credits: Puckung, Marina Zlochin, Canva, and Uniconlabs
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