Why preprint review is the way forward | Research Information

“However their growth in popularity has also highlighted a lack of systems of review around preprints that mean readers cannot easily assess the quality of new findings. This is the great opportunity for the future of research communication – bringing expert peer review and curation to the preprint literature.

A number of organisations are now doing just that, by embracing models that combine the speed and openness of preprints with expert peer review, full publication and curation. Some of them – eLife and Biophysics Colab, for example – are working with a shared vision in mind: a publishing ecosystem in which the significance of research is recognised on its own merits and independently of journal title. Some other models – including those used by PREreview and ASAPbio–SciELO Preprints crowd review – also take advantage of the open nature of preprints to enable researchers from groups traditionally underrepresented in science to participate in public review.

A few examples of these organisations and their respective models are described below. Together they represent significant community efforts to bring review and curation to preprints, and show how alternative models could work in a more open future for research….”

Sciety welcomes ASAPbio–SciELO Preprints crowd review for the evaluation of Brazilian-Portuguese preprints | For the press | eLife

Sciety is pleased to announce the first non-English group to bring open review and curation to the platform: ASAPbio–SciELO Preprints crowd review. Based in Brazil, the group reviews preprints relating to infectious disease research that are posted on the SciELO Preprints server in Brazilian Portuguese.

GigaScience and GigaByte Groups Join Sciety

Over the last month, we have added two new groups, GigaScience and GigaByte, from the journals of the same name, increasing the number of specialist teams displaying their evaluations on Sciety.

GigaScience and GigaByte are part of GigaScience Press. With a decade-long history of open-science publishing, they aim to revolutionise publishing by promoting reproducibility of analyses and data dissemination, organisation, understanding, and use. As open-access and open-data journals, they publish all research objects (publishing data, software and workflows) from ‘big data’ studies across the life and biomedical sciences. These resources are managed using the FAIR Principles for scientific data management and stewardship, which state that research data should be Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Reusable. They also follow the practices of transparency and openness in science publishing, and as such, they embrace open peer review (which is mandated for both journals) and preprints (which are strongly encouraged in GigaScience and mandated for GigaByte). The opportunities for combining both are covered by GigaScience in its video on open science and preprint peer review for Peer Review Week.

 

Biophysics Colab brings review and curation to biophysical preprints on Sciety

“Sciety is pleased to announce that Biophysics Colab, the latest group to be added to the platform, is driving forward its innovative experiment in the review and curation of new research posted as preprints.

Developed by a team within the non-profit initiative eLife, Sciety is a growing network where the latest biomedical and life science preprints are transparently evaluated and curated by communities of experts in one convenient place. These communities include PREreview, Peer Community In, Review Commons, eLife, the Novel Coronavirus Research Compendium and more. Following its addition to Sciety earlier this year, the non-profit Biophysics Colab is now regularly publishing preprint reviews on the platform….”

eLife extends support for Coko’s work on open-source publishing solutions | For the press | eLife

eLife is pleased to announce today its ongoing support for Coko to develop open-source software solutions for publishing, including Kotahi – a new journal platform that can also help facilitate the publication and review of preprints.

Sciety: where research is evaluated and curated by the communities you trust

“The Publish, Review, Curate (PRC) model has been advocated by funders and researchers as a way of improving the quality and availability of published research. Stern BM, O’Shea EK (2019) recommend several changes over three areas:

To drive scientific publishing forward, we propose several long-term changes. Although these changes could be implemented independently, together they promise to significantly increase transparency and efficiency.

Change peer review to better recognize its scholarly contribution.
Shift the publishing decision from editors to authors.
Shift curation from before to after publication.

This community-driven technology effort is to produce an application that can support the changes in behaviour required to effect this change. The approach to building the software is to keep the cost of change low so that the application can quickly adapt to feedback and barriers to adoption, helping the researcher drive the technology to meet their needs….”