2026 Quarter 1 Meeting: March 3, 2026 - 16:30 to 18:00 UTC

Attendees

Daniela Saderi, Christopher Marcum, Aurelia Munene, Monica Granados, Malvika Sharan, Kristen Ratan, Sam Hindle, Kirstie Whitaker, Lamis Elkheir

Agenda

I. Welcomes and goodbyes: New AC members, and celebrate Kristen’s departure from the AC after 6 years of service - Thank you, Kristen!

II. Overview of PREreview governance and the role of the Advisory Committee
a. Advisory Committee Handbook and Charter discussed

b. Governance and decision-making at PREreview presented and discussed. Public Slide deck: PREreview. (2026, March 31). Governance and Decision-Making at PREreview. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.19355617

c. Discussed vacancy for the Treasurer role and the possibility of having a Finance Committee of several AC members

III. Review of strategic plan activities and finance overview
a. PREreview 3Y Strategic Plan document and deck discussed
1) AC discussed how PREreview measures impact and implements feedback from the community, in relation to shaping KRs and strategic plan.

b. Finances and funding opportunities overview

We just soft-launched our experimental matchmaking feature which connects PREreviewers with preprints relevant to their research interests. To begin, you paste in the DOIs or URLs of research objects like preprints and published articles. Then, we give you suggestions about other preprints we think you’d like based on the topics of the works you shared with us.

You are invited to try out our matchmaking experiment and share any feedback you have with us by emailing help@prereview.org. We’d love to know if the recommendations you get back are of interest to you. Would you read them? Would you review them?

Alongside that project, we’re improving the way requests work on PREreview.org. This will allow us to display your public request-a-review history along with your public review history on your profile page. You’ll also be able to sign up for notifications when a review is published about a preprint you requested for review.

We’ve also added support for reviewing datasets from SciELO Data and have begun translating our dataset review workflow into Brazilian Portuguese and Latin American Spanish. Help us out by proofreading the translated strings of text in our collaborative Crowdin project!

What’s next?

We’re planning a community design sprint about how we can better support teaching and learning with PREreview.org in May. Keep up with our social media channels and newsletter to learn more about these events in the near future.

We’re also foreseeing an informational session for anyone who’d like to volunteer to contribute to our next round of localization and translation work in Arabic and French.

Help us out

Let us know how we can keep improving our work! To share your feedback about PREreview.org, please book a chat with Chad Sansing, our Head of Product. Click here to sign up for a chat. If you can’t find a time that works for you, please email Chad to arrange a call. When possible, we provide honoraria for interviewees.

Alternatively, you can:

Stay connected

If you have something to share, drop us an email at help@prereview.org.

You can follow us on Mastodon, BlueSky, LinkedIn, and YouTube. You can also keep up with all the latest news by subscribing to our newsletter and joining our Slack community.

For PREreview, community input is the most reliable compass. In February, we shared our strategic goals with you in a community call designed to listen deeply, learn together, and imagine what’s possible. Here’s what emerged.

On February 11 we gathered together to present the PREreview 2026-2029 Strategic Plan to our community, learn which areas of focus engage them most, and invite their participation in. Eighteen people from different countries and professional backgrounds joined the call to help shape our work for the next three years.

💡 If you haven’t done so already, you can read our Strategic Plan in English, Latin American Spanish, and Brazilian Portuguese (soon) and drop your thoughts too.

What we learned from you

To break the ice, we first asked the Community Call participants what they thought PREreview does as an organization. Here’s a visual summary of what they said:

Then, we prompted participants to write on a notes document, type down in the Zoom chat, and/or vocalize their thoughts on several aspects of our work. We grouped the answers into common themes (in italic):

1. New features, initiatives, or programs you could imagine PREreview undertaking

Expand multilingualism beyond translation: recognition for reviewing in languages other than English; develop a structured multilingual review pathway.

Decentralize governance: Regional nodes/hubs adapting resources to local culture & seeking partnerships with regional preprint/dataset servers.

Lower barriers for participation: Video tutorials for authors, reviewers, and editors in multiple languages; harness social media as a space to review research; scholarships/financial aid for community members from underrepresented regions in the Open Science realm to attend conferences.

Community building & networking: Annual virtual symposium on open peer review innovations;

Institutional collaborations for a systemic shift: Promoting PREreview’s work and vision in university settings; partnering with universities to advance Open Science practices.

2. What are we doing right now that we should keep doing?

Experimenting with modular peer review: Move beyond only reviewing the final manuscript.

Peer review training: Live Reviews as a learning opportunity; train-the-trainer programs like the Champions Program to make cultural changes faster.

Safeguarding shared spaces: Offering bot-free online meetings; clear and respectful guidelines for recording meetings; providing diverse modes of participating and sharing ideas.

Supporting grassroots multipliers: Promoting the creation of new Clubs in different regions and languages.

3. Things that do not fit with your understanding of our Strategic Plan and we should avoid doing

Aligning too much to the current journal system and (not) being careful with partnerships.

4. What’s missing?

Leverage of open source software: Make tools and resources available in platforms like Etherpad or HedgeDoc.

Considering the various roles preprints play in the scholarly publishing ecosystem: Incorporate a “should I review this?” step in the workflow to assess whether the authors have actually published the preprint with the goal of further developing the research.

Style/accessibility guidelines for preprint authors: To make the manuscripts easier to read and review (text justification, page & line number, page size).

Stay connected

If you have feedback on our Strategic Plan, drop us an email at community@prereview.org.

You can follow PREreview updates on Mastodon, BlueSky, LinkedIn, and YouTube. You can also keep up with all the latest news by subscribing to our newsletter and joining our Slack community.

Thank you for dropping by to check out the latest product weeknote from PREreview.org!

What’s new at PREreview?

This week, we are continuing user research and early prototyping of our matchmaking feature. We are figuring out ways to share recommendations for reviewing requested preprints with community members like you based on your interests and review history.

We are also improving review requests so that you can keep track of your requests through your profile, and receive notifications when a review has been published about a preprint you requested.

Additionally, we are working behind the scenes to update a few things here and there on the backend that will make things, like our publication workflows and stats dashboard, work better.

What’s next?

We’ll be analyzing and planning new work in response to our recent community design sprints on gratitude and recognition signals on PREreview.org.

We’ll also be planning an informational session to invite community members to join our next round of localization and translation work in Arabic and French. If this sounds of interest to you, stay tuned for further details!

Help us out

We’d love your feedback on PREreview.org and our latest work! To share, please schedule a call with Chad Sansing, our Head of Product. Click here to sign up for a chat. If you can’t find a time that works for you, please email Chad to arrange a call. When possible, we provide honoraria for interviewees.

Alternatively, you can:

Stay connected

If you have something to share, drop us an email at help@prereview.org.

You can follow us on Mastodon, BlueSky, LinkedIn, and YouTube. You can also keep up with all the latest news by subscribing to our newsletter and joining our Slack community.

In this guest blog piece Jennifer Miller, former FORCE11 Board VP and co-lead of their PREreview Club, regards the collaborative review club as a catalyst for connections throughout a global community with shared interest in metascience.

The FORCE11 PREreview Club was launched following PREreview's workshop at the FORCE11 Scholarly Communications Institute (FSCI) last summer. Since then, it has been my pleasure to co-lead this club, along with Akuma Ifeanyichukwu. Now, we are preparing to do our fourth review in March, where we will incorporate the shared learnings we have built up into our workflows.

The best part of leading the Club has been the people, who have stepped up in so many ways, including helping to prepare for reviews, providing facilitation, and synthesizing reviews, as well as drafting guidance for each review role and extending grace to each other as we try new things. Club members have shared some of their perspectives in this FORCE11 blog post. We've also been fortunate to have a PREreview Champion, Rosario Rogel Salazar, among our founding members. This has led to three additional members (Xiuxi Jade Li and Alan Colín Arce, along with Akuma) joining the latest cohort of Champions. I can't wait to see how their deeper immersion in the PREreview Community helps to extend the base that we're building on.

Within FORCE11, our goal for the Club is community engagement. FORCE11 is known for its events, such as conferences and workshops. The PREreview Club is a way for people to stay engaged with FORCE11 between events and to develop deeper online connections throughout a global community with shared interests in metascience.

PREreview provides thoughtfully prepared materials, and their workshop at FSCI helped a core group of founding members learn the open reviewing process. PREreview has effectively leveraged the features of Google Workspace to create a structured process for collaborative writing. I'm hoping to see that evolve into a process that makes use of free, open-source software (FOSS). As I volunteer my time to introduce people to open knowledge practices, I often find myself also introducing them to software and features that are new to them. I prefer for that work—which bridges teaching and marketing—to focus on FOSS rather than commercial software.

What's next

The experience of starting the FORCE11 PREreview Club has been so positive that I'm also helping to start a club within the Translate Science community. The Translate Science PREreview Club will be reviewing preprints on an ad hoc basis related to multilingual open science. We're not sure exactly what that will mean and are open to exploring it from multiple perspectives! Translate Science has always emphasized FOSS in our operations, so we’ll be exploring options for using it in research reviews, too.

Ideas so far range from conducting reviews of preprints in translatology to hosting reviews in languages other than English, to reviewing translations of survey instruments. Anyone interested in staying in the loop as we plan for our first review to take place in May can sign up here.

Stay connected

If you have something to share or want to learn more about how to engage with PREreview Clubs, drop us an email at community@prereview.org.

You can follow us on Mastodon, BlueSky, LinkedIn, and YouTube. You can also keep up with all the latest news by subscribing to our newsletter and joining our Slack community.

The PREreview Champions Program is designed to equip community members with the resources, skills, and support to facilitate the adaptation and adoption of open and equitable peer review practices within their local communities. The program runs on an annual basis and was piloted in 2024.

We've learned a lot from our past Champions, many of whom are now PREreview experts, and we've adapted the training, processes, and resources to incorporate those learnings. From the 2026 iteration onwards, we have implemented a mentorship component to the program. This means PREreview Champion Alums have the opportunity to stay engaged by working with us on supporting their mentees through the process of designing, building, and facilitating Champions’ final engagement project(s).

This year, we received 39 applications from 24 countries, which you can see visualized in the map below. Read more about the program’s goals, expectations, and benefits, while staying tuned for the next cohort’s applications opening in the Champions Program page.

Location of 2026 Champions Applications

What motivated our Champions to apply?

As our team read through those applications, we were humbled by the echoed commitment to fostering equity, accessibility and diversity in scholarship:

“I want to be a PREreview Champion because I strongly believe in research that is collaborative and accessible to all, and not restricted by geography, privilege, or career stage."

"I want to be a PREreview Champion because I am deeply committed to advancing a culture of openness, equity, and constructive feedback in research, especially within communities where formal peer review skills and open scholarship practices are still limited. Over the years, I have seen how early-career researchers, particularly in low- and middle-income countries, hesitate to engage with preprints or open peer review due to inadequate level of training, confidence, or mentorship.”

Many shared their motivation to broaden the participation in research assessment, to include the voices of often overlooked groups and stakeholders:

“PREreview made me feel like I belonged in a space I didn’t think I had access to. Now I want to help others feel that same shift.  Especially people who think they’re ‘not academic enough’ to contribute. I believe in open, human conversations around research, and in making space for lived experience, not just technical expertise.”

“I hope to inspire and mentor young Africans, especially women who may have not seen many female reviewers as role models, to not shy away from joining this inclusive community.”

And others were invested in community-building and knowledge-sharing:

“What I admire about PREreview is that it is not only making peer reviews open; it is also trying to build a community of reviewers who care about their disciplines and the researchers behind the preprints.”

“Being part of the PREreview Slack community has shown me how enthusiastic, supportive, and mission-driven this community is. I truly value the collaborative spirit and would be elated to contribute meaningfully to it.”

“Ultimately, my goal is to build a culture of shared learning where feedback improves both the quality of research and the confidence of early career scientists to publish and engage openly.”

Meet our 2026 Champions Cohort!

Stay connected

You can follow us on Mastodon, BlueSky, LinkedIn, and YouTube to see the incredible things our Champions are up to. Keep up with all the latest news at PREreview by subscribing to our newsletter and joining our Slack community.

2025 Quarter 4 Meeting: December 10, 2025 - 17:00 UTC

Attendees

Monica Granados, Samantha Hindle, Christopher Marcum,  Aurelia Munene, Daniela Saderi

Regrets

Kristen Ratan

Agenda

I. PREreview updates

a. New Communications and Engagement Officer

b. Update on current runway and latest financial report

c. Updates on recent PREreview events and activities:

• Thriving Together meeting in San Diego, CA
• CZI Open Science Meeting and openRxiv meeting in San Diego, CA
• SACNAS NDiSTEM Open Reviewers Workshop in Columbus, OH
• Staff Retreat in Toronto, CA
• Standards Meeting hosted by openRxiv and CSF in San Diego, CA
• Publish-Review-Curate COAR Notify Meeting in Cambridge, UK

d. Updates on ongoing fundraising and partnerships efforts

e. Update on dataset review - launched mid October

II. 3Y Strategic Plan and Organizational Membership Model

a. AC Discussed  and gave feedback

III. AC handbook status and new AC members recruitment

a. Discussed finalization of the AC handbook

b. Discussed recruitment of 3 new members

PREreview is excited to welcome three new fantastic members to our Advisory Committee. Please join us in welcoming Drs. Kirstie Whitaker, Lamis Yahia Mohamed Elkheir, and Malvika Sharan! We are also grateful to have been working for six years alongside Kristen Ratan who is now leaving the Committee.

PREreview is a nonprofit, fiscally sponsored by Code for Science & Society (501(c)(3)), and operates as a self-managed organization grounded in equity and shared accountability. Within this model, the Advisory Committee plays a key governance role. It advises and supports the Executive Director, provides checks and balances, and offers strategic, staffing, and financial guidance to advance our mission.

Advisory Committee members also serve as ambassadors and advocates, strengthening our impact and helping ensure we remain accountable to our community.

Today, we welcome three incredible new members to our team and, with deep gratitude, say farewell to Kristen, who has served on our Advisory Committee for the past six years.

Daniela Saderi, PREreview Executive Director and Co-founder, says:

“I’m delighted to welcome Malvika, Lamis, and Kirstie to our Advisory Committee. I’m also sad to say goodbye to Kristen after six great years of contribution to our organization. What makes PREreview such a special place is the people who are part of it. Each one of these incredible women has inspired, guided, and challenged me to do better at different moments in my career. Their leadership has already and will continue to help us grow as individuals, as an organization, and as a community.

Meet the three new Advisory Committee members

Dr. Kirstie Whitaker is the Executive Director at the Berkeley Institute for Data Science, where she supports the delivery of innovative open source software and infrastructure to benefit science and society, including through the Jupyter and Scientific Python ecosystems. She is the founder of The Turing Way, a community co-created Jupyter Book that enables leaders and practitioners to deliver open, collaborative, reproducible and inclusive data-intensive research.

Prior to joining the Berkeley Institute for Data Science in January 2025, Kirstie led the Tools, Practices and Systems research program at The Alan Turing Institute, the UK’s national institute for data science and artificial intelligence. She completed her Ph.D. at the Helen Wills Neuroscience Institute at UC Berkeley in 2012, where she held a Fulbright Scholarship and was a Mozilla Open Science Fellow in 2016/17. Kirstie advocates for equity, inclusion and justice as mechanisms to deliver the most impactful, ethical and efficient data science research and innovation.

About joining PREreview's Advisory Committee Kirstie says,

“It is a privilege to be part of PREreview's movement to dream and co-create a trusted, interoperable, human-centered ecosystem that meaningfully improves how we advance knowledge generation and exchange around the world.”

Dr. Lamis Yahia Mohamed Elkheir is an open science leader and academic whose work focuses on shaping how open research practices are understood, adopted, and sustained across African research communities. She brings over a decade of experience working within universities and research networks, combining teaching, programme leadership, and community engagement to support more open, collaborative, and context-aware approaches to research.

As Director of Training & Resource Development at the African Reproducibility Network (AREN) and Lecturer at the University of Khartoum, Lamis works at the intersection of global open science initiatives and local institutional realities. She designs and leads training programmes that centre the needs of early-career and underrepresented researchers. In addition, she serves as Co-Chair of Working Group 2 within the Open Science Monitoring Initiative (OSMI), where she co-leads international efforts to map and analyse open science monitoring frameworks and indicators. Across her work, she is particularly committed to ensuring that researchers in diverse and often resource-constrained contexts have both the voice and the agency to participate meaningfully in shaping research culture and evaluation.

About becoming part of PREreview's Advisory Committee Lamis says,

“I joined PREreview’s Advisory Committee because of its clear commitment to equity and inclusion in peer review. PREreview creates space for early-career and underrepresented researchers to be heard, recognised, and valued as contributors to scholarly evaluation, helping shift long-standing power imbalances in how research is reviewed.”

Dr. Malvika Sharan is the Senior Director of Data Science at the newly established Office of Data Science at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. Previously, she held research and leadership roles at The Alan Turing Institute and European Molecular Biology Laboratory, where she led and scaled data science and bioinformatics community initiatives, notably The Turing Way and EMBL’s Bio-IT.

An open source/science advocate, Malvika co-founded Open Life Science (OLS), an international training, mentoring and capacity building organisation, and recently established RCM Cooperative to mobilise and connect Research Community Managers from across organisations. She has advised initiatives like NASA Open Science, the Society of RSE, Open Bioinformatics Foundation and Data Science Without Borders.

Malvika is a Mozilla Open Leaders Fellow, Software Sustainability Institute Fellow, and was named among the 100 Brilliant Women in AI Ethics (2024). A lifelong learner, Malvika is dedicated to improving open research, community building, collaboration, governance, and ethical practices in data science and AI.

About this new endeavour as member of PREreview's Advisory Committee Malvika says,

“I am honored to join the PREreview Advisory Committee and contribute to building the foundations of strong, ethical science, grounded in inclusive research and transparent peer review. PREreview’s commitment to openness and knowledge equity closely reflects how I have worked to build and support research communities throughout my career.”

Kirstie, Lamis, and Malvika join an existing Advisory Committee composed of Christopher Marcum (Chair), Samantha Hindle (Secretary), Monica Granados (Co-chair), and Aurelia Munene. Read more about them in our People page.

Thank you, Kristen!

Kristen Ratan joined PREreview’s Advisory Committee in 2020, when PREreview was still a young organization led by its co-founders. She brought deep experience in scholarly publishing and the open science movement, helping us situate our vision within a broader global shift in research communication.

Kristen played a pivotal role in shaping what became a key partnership between PREreview and eLife—work that ultimately received support from the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative. Through this collaboration, we also met Chris Wilkinson, then at eLife and now our Head of Technology, and laid the groundwork for ongoing connections between our teams and communities.

We are profoundly grateful for Kristen’s contributions. Her departure from the Advisory Committee is not a goodbye, but an evolution in how we continue to work together. A gifted facilitator and convener, Kristen remains a powerful force in bringing together initiatives like PREreview around a shared vision for the future of scholarly publishing.

Thank you, Kristen.

Stay connected

If you have something to share, drop us an email at community@prereview.org.

You can follow PREreview on Mastodon, BlueSky, LinkedIn, and YouTube. You can also keep up with all the latest news by subscribing to our newsletter and joining our Slack community.

In this special guest blog piece, Katie Corker, Executive Director at ASAPbio, outlines ASAPbio Crowd Review Program’s innovative approach to research assessment and how it makes the most of PREreview.org to foster community-driven preprint review.

Leveraging the strengths of teamwork, diverse perspectives, and expertise, peer review is moving beyond the confines of journal publishing and into the open. In teams of researchers called crowds, it’s easier than ever to provide open, collaborative evaluation of research. ASAPbio’s Crowd Preprint Review Program is an international, community-driven initiative that enables a more transparent and interactive review process. Now in its fifth iteration, the program’s activities are kicking off in March.

This year, two crowds, each consisting of three co-leads and about 60 members, will collaborate to provide peer review and feedback on preprints. Every month, crowd leads select a preprint for review. Crowd members are given two weeks to asynchronously mark up the paper and provide comments. Crowd leads then synthesize the comments into one combined review. The final review is posted on PREreview.org, allowing both the preprint authors and the wider community to benefit from the comments.

The impetus behind the program is twofold. First, ASAPbio believes in the value of innovation and experimentation to improve scholarly publishing. Open evaluation of preprints provides a perfect opportunity to try things out and experiment outside of the confines of traditional journal peer review workflows. Plus, leveraging strength in numbers and diversity of expertise allows our crowds to efficiently provide rich feedback to peers, without the need for each crowd member to do a comprehensive review. Second, the program allows us to provide a structured reviewing experience for researchers -such as people early in their career or those working in low-resource settings- who might not otherwise be invited to participate in the peer review process. The program allows us to capitalize on the valuable expertise of these contributors, returning that value to the community.

Posting our reviews to PREreview.org, as part of their PREreview Clubs initiative, has several benefits for the program. First, the platform is well-integrated with key partners. All crowd members who opt in receive credit for their review and will have it publicly visible on their ORCID profiles. The reviews themselves are viewable on the PREreview platform, but also indexed by partners like Sciety and displayed alongside preprints on servers like bioRxiv. This makes it easier for readers to discover reviews. Second, based on their preferences, reviewers can be named (linking to their ORCID profile), pseudonymous, or fully anonymous. The PREreview platform seamlessly handles these differing researcher needs. Lastly, the user experience of the PREreview platform is top-notch. In just a few minutes, crowd leads can easily upload a review and add all contributing crowd members.

Since 2021, ASAPbio Crowds have provided reviews of 122 papers, with the median paper being reviewed by between five and nine crowd members. Last year’s crowds reviewed papers on Cell Biology, Immunology, Microbiology, and Meta-Research. In an evaluation of the program released last year, crowd members reported that they appreciated the opportunity to develop their reviewing skills and enjoyed the opportunity to collaborate with peers. They also appreciated the user-friendly tools and workflow offered.

This year’s crowds will focus on Cell Biology and Meta-Research. Reviewing will start in the first week of March 2026 and continue on a monthly basis through August 2026. New crowd members can join at any time, but are especially welcome now as the program is kicking off. To join, simply visit our program page and fill out the form. Previous reviewing experience is not necessary, and training is provided. Another way to get involved is to start your own preprint review crowd. Our easy toolkit provides guidance for getting started.

Learn more in ASAPbio’s “A Team Effort: Why and How to do Open Collaborative Peer Review” Community Call

We invite you to please join us on March 5, 2026 for an ASAPbio Community Call, where we will discuss the ins and outs of doing open peer review as part of a team.

ASAPbio and PREreview staff will come together and talk about:

• Peer review crowds and clubs,
• Benefits of collaborative peer review for reviewers and study authors,
• How to start your own peer review crowd or club,
• How to use the PREreview platform for open preprint review.

📌 If you want to learn more about PREreview Clubs, join an existing Club, or are interested in starting your own, you can read more on our website.

Stay connected

If you have something to share, drop us an email at community@prereview.org.

You can follow us on Mastodon, BlueSky, LinkedIn, and YouTube. You can also keep up with all the latest news by subscribing to our newsletter and joining our Slack community.

This week on the Product team, we continued gathering feedback about matchmaking on PREreview.org. We’re working with especially active PREreviewers to develop a feature that will make recommendations based on preprints you have read or reviewed. We’ll draw these recommendations from requests on our site to try and create a virtuous loop resulting in more PREreviews of requested preprints.

We’re also working on ways to make it easier to track your requests, and whether or not people have pubished reviews in response to them.

What’s next?

We hope to have a testable version of our matchmaking feature on sandbox.prereview.org soon so you can try it out!

Help us out

If you’re interested in offering us feedback about matchmaking and other new features on the site, please subscribe to our newsletter. That’s where we often share invitations to be a part of upcoming user research experiences like our community design sprints on gratitude and recognition on PREreview.org.

Stay connected

If you have something to share, drop us an email at help@prereview.org.

You can follow us on Mastodon, BlueSky, LinkedIn, and YouTube. You can also keep up with all the latest news by subscribing to our newsletter and joining our Slack community.

(“Building Open Peer Review in Community: A Situated Experience from the CIbCA PREreview Club” - EN version below)

En esta publicación especial de nuestro blog, invitamos a Rosario Rogel-Salazar y Francisco Silva-Garcés, coordinadores del PREreview Club de la Comunidad Iberoamericana de Ciencia Abierta (CIbCA), a compartir su experiencia de revisión por pares abierta de resúmenes de congreso a través de PREreview.org.

De la intención compartida a una propuesta concreta

Desde sus inicios, la Comunidad Iberoamericana de Ciencia Abierta ha mostrado un interés sostenido por promover prácticas de ciencia abierta que vayan más allá de la adopción declarativa de principios. Entre ellas, la revisión por pares abierta ha ocupado un lugar central como aspiración compartida: ampliamente discutida, valorada como necesaria, pero difícil de implementar sin marcos metodológicos claros ni un acompañamiento adecuado para quienes participen de procesos de evaluación.

En noviembre del 2025, se celebró en Quito, Ecuador, la segunda edición del Congreso Iberoamericano de Ciencia Abierta y, con esta oportunidad se exploró la posibilidad de integrar las prácticas, herramientas y principios de PREreview como parte del encuentro. Esta integración no se planteó como la adopción de un modelo externo a replicar, sino como una adaptación situada, en diálogo con las dinámicas propias de la comunidad iberoamericana de ciencia abierta y con los objetivos específicos del Congreso.

A partir de conversaciones entre el equipo organizador del Congreso y el equipo de PREreview, se definió una propuesta concreta: articular un espacio de revisión por pares abierta que respondiera a las necesidades del Congreso y que, al mismo tiempo, se alineara con los valores de apertura, equidad y cuidado que orientan el trabajo de PREreview.

Un PREreview Club con una configuración distinta

Como resultado de este proceso, propusimos la creación de un PREreview Club vinculado específicamente al Congreso. Desde el inicio quedó claro que este Club tendría una configuración particular dentro del ecosistema PREreview.

A diferencia de la mayoría de los PREreview Clubs, centrados en la revisión abierta de artículos completos depositados en servidores de preprints, en este caso el foco estaría puesto en la revisión por pares abierta de resúmenes extendidos de ponencias.

El flujo editorial del Congreso contempla varias etapas. En una primera fase, las personas interesadas envían una propuesta breve, de aproximadamente 700 palabras, que es evaluada por el comité del Congreso para determinar su pertinencia temática, relevancia académica y alineación con los principios de la ciencia abierta. Sólo aquellas propuestas aceptadas avanzan a una segunda etapa, en la que se solicita la elaboración de un resumen extendido, de entre 3.000 y 3.500 palabras.

Estos resúmenes extendidos se depositan en el repositorio del Congreso en Zenodo, donde quedan públicamente disponibles y cuentan con identificadores persistentes (DOI). El uso de esta infraestructura abierta fue un elemento clave, ya que permitió activar procesos de revisión por pares abierta utilizando los flujos de trabajo de PREreview. De este modo se constituyó el PREreview Club de la Comunidad Iberoamericana de Ciencia Abierta (CIbCA).

Revisar contenidos de Congreso: ampliar el alcance de la revisión abierta

En el marco del Club CIbCA coordinamos 47 revisiones abiertas de resúmenes extendidos, lo que representó una experiencia poco explorada dentro del ecosistema PREreview: la evaluación abierta de contenidos académicos asociados a un evento científico.

El alcance del Congreso fue amplio y diverso. Se recibieron 309 postulaciones provenientes de 23 países de la región. Tras el proceso de evaluación inicial, se aprobaron 113 resúmenes, de los cuales de los cuales 59 avanzaron a la etapa de elaboración y depósito de resúmenes extendidos en Zenodo. Esto habilitó su circulación abierta y, por tanto, su incorporación en los flujos de revisión por pares abierta articulados desde el PREreview Club CIbCA.

Esta experiencia permitió ampliar la comprensión de lo que puede ser la revisión por pares abierta. No se trató únicamente de aplicar estos principios a artículos extensos, sino de reconocer el valor académico de otras tipologías documentales, como los conference papers y otros productos intermedios que forman parte del proceso de investigación y comunicación científica.

Desde esta perspectiva, la revisión abierta de contenidos de congresos contribuye tanto a la difusión de prácticas de ciencia abierta como al fortalecimiento de la bibliodiversidad, en términos de formatos, idiomas y formas de circulación del conocimiento.

Aprendizajes desde una experiencia situada

La experiencia del PREreview Club CIbCA nos permitió identificar varios aprendizajes. En primer lugar, demostró que la revisión por pares abierta puede adaptarse de manera responsable a distintos tipos de contenidos académicos, siempre que exista una infraestructura adecuada y un marco metodológico claro.

En segundo lugar, puso en evidencia que la revisión abierta, cuando se realiza en comunidad y con acompañamiento, se convierte en una práctica formativa y no meramente evaluativa. Las personas participantes no solo contribuyeron a mejorar los trabajos revisados, sino que también fortalecieron sus propias capacidades de lectura crítica, argumentación y retroalimentación constructiva.

En este proceso resultó igualmente central contar con una plataforma que ya dispone de versiones localizadas en español y portugués, lo que facilitó la apropiación de los flujos de trabajo de PREreview por parte de la comunidad iberoamericana. La disponibilidad de la interfaz en estos idiomas no solo redujo barreras de acceso, sino que reforzó la idea de que la revisión por pares abierta puede desarrollarse en múltiples lenguas, sin perder rigor ni coherencia metodológica.

Como parte del desarrollo de esta iniciativa, fue necesario además ajustar y adaptar presentaciones, recursos de formación y plantillas de revisión al español, manteniendo su alineación con los principios y estructuras de PREreview. Estos materiales se encuentran actualmente en proceso de sistematización y se prevé que estén disponibles próximamente en el repositorio de PREreview en Zenodo, con el objetivo de que puedan ser reutilizados y adaptados por otras comunidades interesadas en impulsar prácticas de revisión por pares abierta en contextos similares.

Mirar hacia adelante

La creación del PREreview Club CIbCA mostró que la comunidad iberoamericana de ciencia abierta no solo está interesada en adoptar prácticas de revisión por pares abiertas, sino que está en condiciones de implementarlas de manera situada, crítica y colaborativa.

Integrar la revisión por pares abierta como parte del Congreso no fue únicamente una innovación puntual asociada al evento. Constituyó, más bien, un primer paso para repensar colectivamente cómo se evalúa, se discute y se comparte el conocimiento académico en distintos formatos, en distintos idiomas y desde distintos contextos.

Porque revisar no es solo validar resultados, es también construir comunidad, fortalecer redes y ampliar las formas en que el conocimiento circula.

Building Open Peer Review in Community: A Situated Experience from the CIbCA PREreview Club

In this special guest blog piece, Rosario Rogel-Salazar and Francisco Silva-Garcés, PREreview Club de la Comunidad Iberoamericana de Ciencia Abierta (CIbCA) leads, discuss their collective experience using PREreview.org for open peer review of conference content.

From shared intention to concrete proposal

Since its inception, the Ibero-American Open Science Community has shown a sustained interest in promoting open science practices that go beyond the declarative adoption of principles. Among these, open peer review has occupied a central place as a shared aspiration: widely discussed, valued as necessary, but difficult to implement without clear methodological frameworks and adequate support to those participating in the evaluation process.

The second edition of the Ibero-American Conference on Open Science held in Quito, Ecuador, in November 2025, provided an opportunity to explore the possibility of integrating PREreview practices, tools, and principles in the event. This integration was not proposed as the adoption of an external model to be replicated, but rather as a situated adaptation, in dialogue with the dynamics of the Ibero-American open science community and the Conference’s objectives.

Based on conversations between the Conference organizing team and the PREreview team, a concrete proposal was defined: to articulate an open peer review space that would respond to the needs of the Conference and, at the same time, align with the values of openness, equity, and care that guide the work of PREreview.

A PREreview Club with a different configuration

As a result of this process, we proposed the creation of a PREreview Club specifically linked to the Conference. From the outset, it was clear that the Club would have a particular configuration within the PREreview ecosystem.

Unlike most PREreview Clubs, which focus on the open review of full research articles deposited on preprint servers, the focus in this case would be on the open peer review of extended abstracts of conference papers.

The editorial flow of the Conference involves several stages. In the first phase, interested parties submit a brief proposal of approximately 700 words, which is evaluated by the Conference Committee to determine its thematic relevance, academic significance, and alignment with the principles of open science. Only those proposals that are accepted advance to a second stage, in which the authors are asked to prepare an extended abstract of between 3,000 and 3,500 words.

These extended abstracts are then deposited in the conference repository on Zenodo, where they become publicly available and assigned persistent identifiers (DOI). The use of this open infrastructure was a key element, as it enabled open peer review processes using PREreview workflows. This led to the creation of the PREreview Club of the Ibero-American Open Science Community (CIbCA).

Reviewing conference content: expanding the scope of open review

Within the framework of the CIbCA Club, we coordinated 47 open reviews of extended abstracts, representing a little-explored experience within the PREreview ecosystem: the open evaluation of academic content associated with a conference.

The scope of the conference was broad and diverse. A total of 309 applications were received from 23 countries of the region. After the initial evaluation process, 113 contributions were approved, of which 59 advanced to the stage of preparation and submission of extended abstracts to Zenodo, enabling their open circulation and incorporation into the open peer review flows coordinated by the PREreview Club CIbCA.

This experience broadened our understanding of what open peer review can be. It was not just a matter of applying these principles to lengthy articles, but also of recognizing the academic value of other types of documents, such as conference papers and other intermediate products that form part of the scientific research and scholarly communication process.

From this perspective, open review of conference content contributes both to the dissemination of open science practices and to the strengthening of bibliodiversity in terms of formats, languages, and forms of knowledge circulation.

Lessons learned from a specific experience

The experience of the CIbCA PREreview Club allowed us to identify several lessons. First, it showed that open peer review can be responsibly adapted to different types of scholarly content, if there is an adequate infrastructure and clear methodological frameworks.

Second, it highlighted that open review, when carried out in a community and with support, becomes a formative practice and not merely an evaluative one. Participants not only contributed to improving the reviewed works, but also strengthened their own critical reading, argumentation, and constructive feedback skills.

In this process, having a platform that already had localized versions in Spanish and Portuguese was fundamental in facilitating the adoption of PREreview workflows by the Ibero-American community. The availability of the interface in these languages not only reduced barriers to access but also reinforced the idea that open peer review can be carried out in multiple languages without losing rigor or methodological consistency.

As part of the development of this experience, it was also necessary to adjust and adapt presentations, training resources, and review templates to Spanish, while maintaining their alignment with PREreview principles and structures. These materials are currently being systematized and are expected to be available soon in the PREreview repository on Zenodo, with the aim of enabling their reuse and adaptation by other communities interested in promoting open peer review practices in similar contexts.

Looking ahead

The creation of the CIbCA PREreview Club showed that the Ibero-American open science community is not only interested in adopting open peer review practices but is also able to implement them in a situated, critical, and collaborative manner.

Integrating open peer review as part of the Conference was not just a one-off innovation associated with the event. Rather, it was a first step toward collectively rethinking how scholarly knowledge is evaluated, discussed, and shared in different formats, in different languages, and from different contexts.

Because reviewing is not only about validating results, but also about building community, strengthening networks, and expanding the ways in which knowledge circulates.

Stay connected

If you have something to share, drop us an email at community@prereview.org.

You can follow us on Mastodon, BlueSky, LinkedIn, and YouTube. You can also keep up with all the latest news by subscribing to our newsletter and joining our Slack community.

The fresh start of a new year is a great time to nourish our social networks, weigh on the things left on the to-do list from last year, and dream big for the future. It is said that a good way to focus your energy during the year ahead is to pick a word reflecting a value, feeling, or goal. PREreview’s word for 2026 is… CONNECTION.

We are excited to begin this journey together!

Welcome Sol to the PREreview team!

The PREreview Team is very excited to welcome María Sol Ruiz, who joined us last month as a part-time Champions Fellow to support the coordination of this year’s Champions Program and other community-facing initiatives.

Join our upcoming Community Call

As you may already know, last month we published PREreview’s 2026-2029 Strategic Plan. The goals we have set for this period will guide our work towards building a world where truth is co-created, power is shared, and research is done with communities, not just about them. To create the future we envision for knowledge sharing and evaluation, your input is both needed and honored.

The Modular Peer Review Working Group has kicked off!

In collaboration with the Continuous Science Foundation, we are co-leading a Modular Peer Review Working Group to imagine how peer review can evolve in a modular publishing ecosystem, where datasets, code, methods, visuals, and other components are shared independently and iteratively.

The Working Group sessions launched in January, with a wide and global participation! From publishers and journal teams, librarians, researchers at different career stages, infrastructure and product/tool builders, funders, to open science community members and organizers, everyone brought in their perspectives on how to rethink and improve peer review.

PREreview platform updates

New gratitude and recognition design sprints

Please join us later this month for the community design sprints about developing new features for gratitude and recognition on PREreview.org.

Our goal is to create new ways to acknowledge and celebrate the work of all PREreviewers who contribute to modular and preprint review on the site. We would love to know more about what could make PREreview.org more valuable to you in terms of appreciation and reciprocity between community members, and between our reviewers and the authors of the research outputs they review.

We’ll run this call twice to make participation more accessible for a wider group of community members. Each call will last about 60 minutes. You only need to join one call. Click on the button to register!

• Gratitude and recognition community design sprint 1 - 24 February 2026 - 14:00 UTC

• Gratitude and recognition community design sprint 2 - 25 February 2026 - 17:00 UTC

Help us improve preprint matchmaking

Recently, the PREreview Product team has been working on a new approach to matchmaking that draws keywords from preprints you’ve already read to help us recommend new preprints to read. We are currently pulling those new recommendations from preprints that other community members have requested for review.

If you’d like to help us improve this new approach to matchmaking, let us know at help@prereview.org and we’ll invite you to a brief user research chat to learn more about what you’re already reading and reviewing.

Events

Upcoming events

• Feb 10, 2026 - 16:00 UTC — DataCite webinar during Love Data Week - 10 February at 16:00 UTC. The webinar will review how connections between DataCite and ORCID make it possible for data to be discovered, analyzed, and attributed. Register
• Feb 11, 2026 - 11:00 ET / 16:00 UTC — PREreview 3Y Strategic Plan: Community Call - Register
• Feb 12, 2026 - 12:00 ET — “Reimagining peer review through openness, equity, and collaboration” seminar, by PREreview’s Executive Director Daniela Saderi. Part of the Rigor and Reproducibility Seminar Series of the University of Florida. Register
• Feb 17, 2026 - 13:30 ET —  “Diversification and Decentralization of Peer Review” session at NISO PLUS 2026 Conference, in Baltimore (MD), USA. PREreview Champion Alum Kylie Yui Dan will be presenting alongside PREreview co-founder and Advisory Committee Secretary Samantha Hindle (openRxiv), Tony Alves (HighWire Press) & David Reinstein (The Unjournal).
• 2026 Dataverse Community Meeting — Early bird registration closes on Feb 28 - 23:59 CET. The Meeting will be held on May 12-15 in Barcelona, Spain. This year’s theme, “Advancing Data and Dataverse: AI, Interoperability, and Sensitive Data”, highlights key areas of interest for data professionals and researchers.
• March 5, 2026 - 12:00 ET — ASAPbio Community Call: "A Team Effort: Why and How to do Open Collaborative Peer Review". ASAPbio and PREreview staff will discuss peer review crowds and clubs, including how the PREreview.org can be used for these activities. Register.
• March 27, 2026 — ATScience 2026, a full-day exploration of AT Protocol for science, education, and open knowledge. A side event to AtmosphereConf 2026, held in Vancouver, Canada. Register and learn more.

Recent events

• Jan 29, 2026 — “PREreview: Transforming Peer Review with Researchers, for Communities” - Data Umbrella webinar series. Recording available on YouTube.

Highlights from the Slack Community

• What we are reading:
  - State of Preprints in the Life Sciences 2026, by Jonny Coates at Rippling Ideas. If you advocate for preprints, this is the most up to date data for preprint publication and usage, preprint review, and more!
  - Beyond Open Access: Building Justice in Scholarly Communication, by Godwyns Onwuchekwa
  - The Future of AI: 2026 Predictions from Mozilla Fellows Around the World
  - How to lead a journal club you won’t be embarrassed by later
• Open Call for rOpenSci Champions Program 2026-2027 (Spanish, Latin America focus) - Closes on Feb 20, 2026.
• Dryad is looking for a full-time remote data curator based in the US. “Data curators carefully evaluate submitted research metadata and data files, and assist with identifying workflow and process improvements, offering guidance to authors, and supporting team members.”
• The International Science Council (ISC) is looking for a Junior Science Officer who is passionate about translating science into action on the world’s most pressing issues. Based in Paris, France. Deadline for applications: March 9, 2026.

If you are looking for your new career step, check out the job vacancies open in our #jobs-and-opportunities channel, and share any of your own.

You can also find lots of preprint authors requesting feedback on their work in our #request-a-review channel.

Stay connected

If you have something to share, drop us an email at community@prereview.org.

You can follow us on Mastodon, BlueSky, LinkedIn, and YouTube. You can also keep up with all the latest news by subscribing to our newsletter and joining our Slack community.

Welcome to a new year of weeknotes from the Product team at PREreview.org! Thanks for taking the time to catch up with us.

What’s new at PREreview?

This week, we’ve been working on a new approach to matchmaking that draws keywords from preprints you’ve already read to help us recommend new preprints to read. We’re making those new recommendations from preprints that other community members have requested for review. If you’d like to help us improve this new approach to matchmaking, let us know at help@prereview.org and we’ll invite you to a brief user research chat to learn more about what you’re already reading and reviewing.

We’ve also recently improved the way we count and display PREreviews published in languages other than English on our public stats dashboard. Additionally, we’ve made it possible for new dataset PREreviews to show up on our website and community Slack whenever a new one is published.

What’s next?

Once we’ve launched our matchmaking feature, we’ll begin work on several new initiatives for 2026, including finding a new CMS for our blog, localizing and translating PREreview.org into Arabic and French, and developing new features for sharing recognition and gratitude on PREreview.org.

Help us out

We’re always delighted to learn alongside community members like you! If ever you’d like to share feedback with us, please schedule a call with Chad Sansing, our Head of Product, to offer feedback about PREreview.org. Click here to sign up for a chat. If you can’t find a time that works for you, please email Chad to arrange a call. When possible, we provide honoraria for interviewees.

📍 Please feel welcome to share feedback through this anonymous survey, as well.

Stay connected

If you have something to share, drop us an email at help@prereview.org.

You can follow us on Mastodon, BlueSky, LinkedIn, and YouTube. You can also keep up with all the latest news by subscribing to our newsletter and joining our Slack community.

Sol joins PREreview after being engaged in communities that promote open science practices, such as the eLife Ambassadors’ and the PREreview Champions’ programme. She is a biomedical researcher at the University of Buenos Aires and the National Scientific Research Council (CONICET) in Argentina, where her research focuses on the improvement of molecular diagnostics and the identification of prognostic biomarkers in pediatric leukemias. Adding to her experience, she is part of the teaching staff for Molecular Biology and Human Genetics at the University of Buenos Aires. Throughout her career, she has been involved in activities that require interaction with different communities, with a special interest in those that aim at improving access to scientific resources and educational tools in disadvantaged groups.

Sol will be working to support the PREreview team with the coordination of community-facing tasks while our Head of Community is on leave. This will include supporting our 2026 cohort of the PREreview Champions Program, in the coordination and facilitation of PREreview workshops, Live Reviews, and other community events, and collaborating closely with the rest of the PREreview team to ensure continuity and alignment across all our community initiatives.

💬Vanessa, PREreview Head of Community, says,

I am so happy to have Sol join the PREreview Team as our first-ever ‘Champions Fellow’! Sol has contributed much to the PREreview Community over the last few years, including as a member of our initial cohort of PREreview Champions Program. Her familiarity with our work and her deep commitment to our mission mean she will be an invaluable resource over the next few months while I am on leave, and I feel very assured that our community is in safe hands.

🗨️ Sol says,

I am looking forward to contributing to the PREreview’s mission of changing such an important aspect of science that is the revision of the work of your colleagues, from a constructive and inclusive perspective. I also feel fortunate to be part of this vibrant, global community of people that works towards promoting open scholarship practices and reflecting on what we can do better.

Stay connected

If you have something to share, drop us an email at community@prereview.org.

You can follow us on Mastodon, BlueSky, LinkedIn, and YouTube. You can also keep up with all the latest news by subscribing to our newsletter and joining our Slack community.

This special edition of the PREreview newsletter offers a look at our strategic goals for the next three years and invites you to a community call designed to listen deeply, learn together, and imagine what’s possible.

Powered by a collective growing momentum

Last year's efforts were focused on expanding our global and community-driven ecosystem for open peer review. PREreview’s 2025 Annual Report is both a reflection of what we’ve accomplished together and an invitation to continue building what comes next. We encourage you to read it and share your comments or questions with us!

❤️🔁 We would be very grateful if you could also spread the word on social media:

• Mastodon post
• LinkedIn post
• Bluesky post

Guided by our vision, we are dreaming big

Today we published the Strategic Plan that will shape PREreview’s work over the next three years. During that time we will center on:

1. Expanding our infrastructure for modular, discoverable, and integrated peer review of research outputs.
2. Continuing to grow a global, community-driven ecosystem for open peer review, by adding new languages and extending the impact of our training programs.
3. Broaden participation for just knowledge systems, by partnering with patient and patient advocate audiences, and optimizing our platform and programs for learning and community settings.
4. Amplifying impact through shared leadership and sustainable growth.

By 2029, we aim to shift norms in research assessment so they reflect the values of equity, openness, and care. This transformation will move us closer to a world where truth is co-created, power is shared, and research is done with communities, not just about them.

If you want to go far, go together

The change we seek cannot—and must not—be carried by a single person, organization, or industry alone. YOU ARE NEEDED to create the future we envision for knowledge sharing and evaluation.

For that reason, we invite you to join a 60-minute Community Call that will take place on February 11, 2026 at 4 PM UTC. During the call we will share our three-year strategic goals and take in your feedback to help us guide what comes next.

❣️ Thank you so much for your contributions to support and share research openly!

Stay connected

If you have something to share, drop us an email at community@prereview.org.

You can follow us on Mastodon, BlueSky, LinkedIn, and YouTube. You can also keep up with all the latest news by subscribing to our newsletter and joining our Slack community.