1. Department of Biomedical Data Science, Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth, Lebanon, NH, USA. 
2. Department of Molecular and Systems Biology, Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth, Hanover, NH, USA.
3. Ifakara Health Institute, Bagamoyo, Tanzania.
4. Tanzania Human Genetic Organization-Communications Team, Dar es Salaam, Tanzania.

Introduction

Open science involves sharing work early and openly. However, there is more to a manuscript than simply the words on the page. The underlying data is important to share as well, to build trust in research and further accelerate scholarly communication and advances in knowledge production. However, anecdotally, many researchers do not share their data when they post a preprint, choosing to hold this back until journal publication.

Here, we survey the websites of four preprint servers, and seven data repositories, focused on the life sciences. The preprint servers (bioRxiv, medRxiv, Open Science Framework (OSF), and ResearchSquare) host manuscripts. The repositories house a variety of types of data, from gene expression of humans and non-human species (GEO, SRA, EGA), to protein structure (PDB), and other research outputs (Zenodo, figshare, Dryad).

Our purpose was to determine the policies repositories may have, or not have, around hosting data that has not yet been published in a traditional academic journal, as well as policies preprint servers may have around inclusion of data. 

Preprint server policies

We surveyed the websites of bioRxiv, medRxiv, OSF, and ResearchSquare, to determine if policies exist for deposition of data generated in preprints. 

Both bioRxiv and medRxiv encourage data availability statements. Additionally, both note that if data for a manuscript is hosted on a member of the International Nucleotide Sequence Database Consortium, the sequences will be released once the manuscript is posted. While supplemental materials can be included on both of these servers, large additional files need to be put into the correct database. medRxiv has additional, stricter policies around patient data. Pictures of individuals cannot be included in manuscripts, and patient data needs to be properly deidentified. Recently, bioRxiv has partnered with Dryad to streamline data sharing.

ResearchSquare highly recommends that authors make data generated within a manuscript publicly available, as well as contain a data availability statement. 

In addition to acting as a preprint server, OSF can also serve as a data repository. OSF is a platform to enable collaboration between scientists, whether this be private, or public, by aggregation of data and other work. The deposition of data related to preprints posted on OSF affiliated servers is recommended, but not required. As of August 25, 2025, OSF has suspended submissions to their generalist preprint server, however the 14 community-run preprint servers that are affiliated with OSF are unaffected by this change. 

While the preprint servers surveyed mention the importance of data deposition, none seem to have clear guidelines that require data deposition. 

We recommend that preprint servers adopt clear and easy to find guidelines around data deposition. Strict rules around data deposition could discourage some scientists from utilizing preprinting, so a balance needs to be struck. Greater education about preprints and dispelling of myths could also support this, as well as connection to the FAIR principles. 

Data repositories – what are your options?

Data sharing has become a norm in science communication and dissemination as a means to comply with journals’ data sharing policies, grants, project requirements, and for the sole purpose of making data available for other scientists in turn enhancing credibility to the research work.

It is vital to understand the type of data your research work generated and in which repository this data can be stored. Data should be submitted to discipline-specific repositories, and in cases where a discipline-specific repository is unavailable, general data repositories like Zenodo and figshare can be used. 

When it comes to preprint publishing, many posted preprints do not have their data deposited in repositories, nor the link/accession number shared along with the preprint for a work that has deposited its data in a repository. We looked into repositories’ data policy sharing to see how they support early data sharing before peer review, and if they accept data associated with preprints. 

While most of the repositories allow submission of data and figures at any stage of the manuscript cycle, i.e. before the peer review process, an exception was observed with the  Protein Data Bank (PDB) repository. PDB strictly admits data whose work has been or is undergoing the peer review process, and only published data will be made public.

Data repositories have varying policies regarding data release, access, and discoverability. Some repositories require explicit actions from authors to make data public, while others may have embargo periods or access restrictions. In most formats an accession number or links for reviewers are provided for data verification during submissions in peer reviewed journals. GEO for instance, will publish data immediately once the accession number is made public in any form i.e as a preprint or a published peer-reviewed article. For the SRA, on the other hand, data submitters need to determine if their data is suitable for public distribution or requires controlled access.

Data repositories should follow the FAIR data-sharing guidelines, as doing so enhances the value and impact of data, promotes transparency, and supports the long-term sustainability of scientific knowledge. It’s therefore in the best interest of authors and researchers to deposit their data in repositories that adhere to these principles, ensuring accessibility, visibility, and reusability of their work.

The FAIR principles entail the following: “Findable” meaning metadata should be issued a persistent and unique identifier making it easy to locate. “Accessible” metadata should be retrievable using standardized protocols and clear usage conditions. ”Interoperable” means data should be in standardized formats, vocabularies (including broadly applicable language), and structures that allow data to be integrated across different systems and disciplines. Finally, the “Reusable” principle emphasizes that data should be clearly licensed, thoroughly documented, and aligned with domain-relevant community standards, ensuring that it can be confidently and effectively reused by others. In the era of making the research process more open and accessible, the FAIR principles of data sharing help create a more open, efficient, and collaborative research ecosystem. 

Call To Action

Through a survey of preprint servers and data repositories, we found general support for deposition of data and preprinting of manuscripts. Most data repositories mention the FAIR principles within their websites as well. 

However clear guidance is lacking as to when data generated during research activity should be deposited. We recommend that both preprint servers and data repositories adopt clear and easy to find guidelines that align with the FAIR principles. This will benefit all researchers and ensure reusability of data. 

And as always, we encourage greater education on the importance and validity of preprinting.

Resources

A larger table with additional data about the repositories is available on Zenodo (https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.17791518).

2024 was transformative for the Review and Curate Network, as we championed open science, preprint sharing, and collaborative peer review in Rwanda and across Africa. This year, we launched impactful programs and saw significant milestones that reflected our mission to foster transparency and inclusivity in research.

Key Highlights From 2024

Launch of the Rwanda Preprint Club

The club was officially founded on April 2, 2024, at the University of Rwanda with funding support from ASAPbio. The aims of the club were to raise awareness and increase the use of preprints. The hybrid launch event attracted 14 in-person and 4 virtual attendees.

Photo taken at the launch day at the University of Rwanda

Biweekly Programs

Across the year, we held seven biweekly sessions focusing on essential research topics and preprint writing. Session highlights included:

• Peer review and engaging with preprints
• Writing the results section
• ASAPbio preprint peer review guide resources
• Scientific writing and preprint drafting
• Writing a research paper
• Discussing the future of the club

Webinar Series

In addition to the biweekly program, we held a webinar series which provided a platform to discuss broader themes in preprint advocacy and open science across four sessions.

The Rwanda Preprint Club had its first webinar in May 2024. The first webinar was an opportunity to host AfricArxiv. Ms. Roseline Dzekem Dine introduced the Rwanda Preprint Club and gave the floor to Johanna Havemann from AfricArxiv and Martha Chikuni from UbuntuNet Alliance. Eighteen club members were taught how to use AfricArXiv. The facilitator empowered attendees, providing them with valuable insights into the adoption of digital tools and persistent identifiers. 

The second webinar discussed the benefits of open peer review and how researchers can work together to review preprints. Vanessa Fairhurst and Chad Sansing from PREreview shared opportunities for learning and teaching within the research community. Members of the 2024 PREreview Champions Program from the African context shared their experiences working with PREreview, providing a great opportunity to understand more about collaborative review processes and their impact on science. The webinar series was co-organized by UbuntuNet Alliance and Access 2 Perspectives as part of the ORCID Global Participation Program.

In September, the Rwanda Preprint Club was featured in another webinar on “Advocating for Preprint Sharing in Rwanda and Africa in General.” In this webinar, the club discussed the benefits of preprints, support for scientific progress, challenges, and opportunities for preprint sharing in Rwanda and across Africa. The webinar series was co-organized by UbuntuNet Alliance and Access 2 Perspectives.

In the final webinar, Ms. Dine Roseline Dzekem was invited by the Digital Hub for Open Research in East Africa to provide an introduction to preprints. The recording of the session is available on YouTube.

Preprint Advocacy, Reviews, and Preprint

As the club continued advocating for preprints, eight preprints were published on the AfricArXiv repository, covering diverse topics such as antimicrobial resistance, healthcare system strengthening, and road safety education. This was in addition to seven preprints that were reviewed via PREreview.

Needs Assessment Preprint

A needs assessment conducted between September and November provided valuable insights related to preprinting.

Among 100 respondents from different African countries, 64% were aware of preprints, 40% reported institutional promotion, and 62% recognized their relevance to institutional roles. However, 53% cited limited recognition of preprints within the scientific community. Desired benefits from preprint clubs included research funding support (83%), open peer review (82%), and access to shared opportunities (79%). Participants recommended educational workshops, partnerships with academic institutions, targeted online campaigns, and localized resources to enhance preprint adoption and foster an open science ecosystem across Africa.

The findings of the preprint were published on AfricArxiv.

End-of-Year Event

The club celebrated its end-of-year with an event “Advocating for Preprint Sharing in Rwanda and Africa” which received 150 registrations. Three guest speakers were featured with presentations on the key scholarly services for preprint sharing and community-based peer review: 

• Jonny Coates from ASAPbio gave an overview of the African and global preprint landscape. 
• Jo Havemann from Access 2 Perspectives provided an overview of Open Science, Open Access principles, and the opportunity to share preprints via the continental research repository AfricArXiv. 
• Vanessa Fairhurst from PREreview discussed the services and activities of PREreview and the value of collaborative peer review.

During the event, the findings of the needs assessment were also presented, revealing the preprint promotion and adoption in Africa. Ms. Dine Roseline Dzekem rounded up the event by sharing the club’s journey, achievements, challenges, and exciting plans for the future. 

It was during this event that the club’s name officially changed from the Rwanda Preprint Club to the Review and Curate Network. The network aims to foster a collaborative and transparent environment that evaluates, validates, and organizes preprints.

At the end of the event, participants were provided with certificates of attendance. The event was published on AfricArxiv and a full recording of the event can be found online.

Looking Ahead

As we step into 2025, our focus remains on expanding awareness of preprints in schools and universities, organizing workshops, and fostering collaborations to strengthen the open science ecosystem across Africa.

I spoke at the 17th Young Investigators’ Meeting (YIM) in Agra, India. The meeting, including the satellite sessions meant exclusively for the postdocs, was spread over 5 days (3-7 March 2025). I attended day 3 of the meeting and spoke about Preprints and Open Science. This was my first YIM, and I enjoyed meeting and discussing it with many of the ECRs and Postdocs, including the trip to see the legendary Taj Mahal. The idea of the meeting, well organized and managed, was to get ECRs and postdocs (those close to applying for independent faculty positions in India) locked in a single room with other senior investigators and institute heads who may help them to understand the process of hiring in Indian universities and research institutions, along with exposing them to the different aspects of the larger ecosystem of Indian academia.

I spoke about how best to practice open science, our efforts to spread awareness on preprints in India, and building a database of preprints with annotations, especially those from India, with information that may help search for relevant information in preprints. I shared our unpublished data on preprints from Indian researchers to make information open, free, and immediately accessible to all. India lags behind the rest of the world in the preprint deposits (with about 1/50th of the global number) in three prominent preprint servers (bioRxiv, medRxiv, and arXiv Q-bio*). I discussed what we could do in the community to boost this number and how organizations like ASAPbio are helping spread awareness of preprints and making the fruits of science reach everyone in a timely and free manner (ASAPbio sponsored my talk).

There were reactions from three groups of folks to my talk. First, the postdocs and ECRs. Those who directly spoke with me after my talk appreciated getting the information. They were largely unaware of the benefits of preprints and learned that metrics like JIF are bogus and not the right surrogate to judge the quality of science. This group also appreciated someone older from academia talking about it openly and publicly. The second group was that of a few senior investigators, all of whom, while appreciating that someone was talking about it, were not 100% sure whether they should embrace preprints fully. Their apprehensions primarily stem from their experience with the old way of publishing the results of science and playing a part in that closed system. The apprehension and fear of losing out in an open field of science publishing were genuine. The reaction from the third group, the publishers in the room, was most interesting. Their reaction was rather a stunned silence except one who told me that he really liked my talk.

Representatives from four publishers (American Chemical Society, Springer Nature, Taylor & Francis, and American Society for Microbiology) spoke before me. ACS is one of the largest, or perhaps the largest, society publishers, with ~800M US $ revenue in 2024. I asked the speaker how ACS is helping authors from India, if at all, to pay their exorbitant article processing charges (APC). While being sympathetic, the ACS representative was non-committal. Next, the Chief Editor of Scientific Reports, a publication from Springer Nature, gave a talk on ethics in publication. It was a great talk, except there was a problem. Only a few months back, a few fraud sleuths, including Elisabeth Bik, had written an open letter (https://deevybee.blogspot.com/2024/10/an-open-letter-regarding-scientific.html) to the Research Integrity Director of Springer Nature on how the publisher is doing very little to protect the scientific literature from fraudulent work! That was what I asked him: how did the journal that had generated >60M US$ in revenue for 2024 with >22K published articles that year spend little on checking the articles for fraud and low-quality work? He gave a standard answer expected from a journal’s Chief Editor from a commercial publisher mega house. The next talk was even more interesting, by the Taylor & Francis (T&F) representative, another publishing giant. The talk was on Open research and how T&F is doing so much to promote it, except that it is not (in my opinion). Recently, the publisher has purchased F1000Res and PeerJ, one of which practiced a post-publication open review system, leaving little options for the authors to submit their manuscripts to small independent publishers. What disturbed me the most in that talk was the news on specific partnerships the publisher has entered into with some institutions in India for publishing on their platform. I asked myself, and I could be completely wrong, why on earth would an institution enter into an agreement with a commercial publisher that sounded almost like bribing the publisher by paying exorbitant APC to publish a certain number of articles, irrespective of basic quality, from the institution in the publisher’s journals?

That set the stage for my talk. Science publishers do not fund research, do not conduct research, do not write manuscripts, and do not review them. The only thing they do (apart from other minor things) is contact scientists to work for them for free and decorate the work in beautiful PDFs. Do we need them? No, we do not. Whether it is a society or a commercial publisher, the bottom line is that both are obstacles to the free and fair dissemination of scientific information. The scientific community needs platforms where they can submit their completed work for free and for other experts to judge and comment fairly and immediately without waiting months (sometimes years) for the peer review process to complete. The idea is to get away from the binary of “Accept” or “Reject” that traditional journals do and to provide objective feedback on one’s science. Indeed, a perfect system for peer review and permanent archiving does not exist today. Still, there are efforts from many individuals and organizations to reach this goal, and it is incumbent on all of us to help achieve that goal.

In retrospect, giving publishers space to speak to ECRs and postdocs was a missed opportunity. We do not need to hear sermons from these publishers on practicing open science and being ethical in our research. We need to discuss how soon we can escape the claws of greedy publishers and make the fruits of science available to all free of cost, enabling our peers to comment and provide constructive criticisms of scholarly work.

*partial data, from 2013-2023

It’s peer review week and to celebrate, we are releasing a preview of one of the 2024 ASAPbio Fellows projects focused on investigating the ASAPbio Crowd Preprint Review activities.

ASAPbio Crowd Preprint Review

The theme of peer review week this year is “Innovation and Technology in Peer Review”. Since 2021, ASAPbio has been running its own version of crowd preprint review. This approach involves using a crowd of reviewers to collaboratively review a manuscript and was developed by the journal Synlett in 2017. The use of a crowd is the innovative aspect to this approach of performing peer review as it enables real-time discussion amongst reviewers and allows individual reviewers to only comment on aspects that fall within their expertise. This means that a large number of small comments can be combined into a traditional-looking peer review. Additionally, ASAPbio posts all reviews publicly which are subsequently linked back to the preprint, providing transparency and greater context for readers.

The ASAPbio approach involves crowd leads choosing preprints and disseminating them to the crowd members for review. Once crowd members add their comments, crowd leads synthesise the comments and discussions into a traditional-looking peer review. They then upload the synthesised reviews so that the reviews are publicly available (Fig 1).

ASAPbio began with a pilot in 2021 focused on cell biology preprints. The following year this expanded to three disciplines, including one in collaboration with SciELO that covered Portuguese-language preprints. In 2023, there were 4 crowds covering preprints across bioRxiv. Four crowds were again launched in 2024 and will run for an entire 12 month period, in contrast to the more tightly defined periods of previous years. Between 2021 and September 2024, this initiative has produced 97 public reviews on preprints (Table 1).

Experience of crowd members

A group of Fellows has been conducting a survey of current and past crowd members to reflect on the experience of being a crowd member. As a preview of our work, we present some data on the survey respondents and the reasons that they joined the program.

The majority of respondents indicated that they had a background in biology or meta-research with remaining disciplines being collated into “other”. Given the historical roots of ASAPbio as a life science organisation, it is unsurprising that biology is so well represented. There has also been a focus on meta-research as a crowd which explains the number of respondents who identified this as being their scientific area of interest (Fig 2A). In terms of career stages, most respondents were post-doctoral researchers (post-docs) or Principle Investigators (PIs) (Fig 2B). There were also 7 students who responded to the survey. Of those who stated that they had never participated in a crowd review, the majority were students or PIs whereas those most actively engaged were the post-docs. Those who identified as “other” job titles were also actively participating.

Why do people participate (or not) in crowd review?

Respondents indicated varied reasons for why they participate in crowd review activities (Fig 2C). Engaging in Open Science practices was most cited, followed by developing peer review skills, and contributing to the science community. Less frequently, respondents mentioned participating in crowd reviews for personal gains, such as increasing their visibility, showing evidence of their productivity, and keeping up-to-date with the latest research in their field. The top reasons for participating collectively represent 3 levels of impact: 1) Society, 2) Self, and 3) The scientific community. This strong emphasis on contributing to open science and self-directed training highlights the two key benefits of crowd preprint review. Indeed, the collaborative nature of the review process was highlighted in several free-text responses, with one responder communicating how it enables “sharing reviewers concerns, coming to an agreement, [and] sharing the workload.”

The two biggest reasons that respondents stated for not reviewing a given preprint were a lack of relevant expertise and a lack of time (Fig 2D). Given the size of the crowds, it is not unexpected that some will not have the specific expertise for any component of a given preprint. However, the benefit of a crowd is that this “expertise” burden is reduced as reviewers do not need to comment on the entire preprint. It is possible that this aspect could be better communicated to encourage people to review more granularly and to accept that as a valid contribution. Academics are under heavy workloads and are time-poor. Additionally, we have noticed in previous iterations of the crowd review program that in the busier months in the academic calendar, there is an anecdotal reduction in reviewing activities. A lack of interest in the topic was the third most common reason for not reviewing a given preprint. Thus far, crowds have been designed to cover entire fields (such as “cell biology” or “immunology”), so it cannot be expected that every chosen preprint will be of interest to the entire crowd.

This preview of our on-going efforts highlights altruism and a desire to participate in better practices as the primary motivator for participating in the crowd review program.

Conclusion

We’re still performing a full data analysis and expect to post a full preprint before the end of the year! But if you would like to join the crowd preprint review efforts for 2024-2025 you can sign up by clicking this link.

The landscape of scholarly communication is rapidly evolving, with preprints emerging as a transformative tool for research dissemination worldwide. However, in Tanzania like the rest of Sub-Saharan Africa, the adoption of preprints for scholarly communication remains limited (David et al., 2024). Creating awareness of preprints and capacity building especially among early career researchers is one of the ways to address the gap. This workshop was conducted to introduce preprints to Tanzanian early career researchers, which included postgraduate students, postdoctoral fellows, and academicians.

The Workshop
The hands-on event was a one-day introductory workshop on preprints held on 20th March 2024 at Muhimbili University of Health and Allied Sciences (MUHAS), Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. It was organized by the ASAPbio fellow Aneth David in partnership with Tanzania Human Genetics Organization (THGO) and the Biotechnology Society of Tanzania. The workshop attracted 61 registrations and a total of 33 participants were able to participate. Although initially the workshop was planned to be full in-person, 6 virtual participants were allowed to participate via zoom meetings since they were not able to travel to attend in person. Being a hands-on workshop, participants were asked whether they had preprints ready for posting, and 10 of them indicated so. The workshop was divided into two parts, theoretical and practical sessions. A theoretical session featured three talks on scientific publishing, open science and an introduction to preprints. The hands-on session featured familiarization with different preprints servers and a demo on how to upload preprints on some of well renowned servers including bioXirv, MedRxiv, OSF affiliated server AfricArXiv, and Qeios. Participants then had an opportunity to practice on how to navigate through different servers and upload preprints for those who were ready to do so.

Sessions Overview

Session 1: Introduction to Open Science (OS) and Principles by Dr. Paul Muneja
During the first session, Dr. Paul Muneja took participants through the fundamental concepts of scholarly communication, exploring its historical evolution and the various formal and informal channels through which scientific information is disseminated. Dr. Muneja then elucidated on Open Science (OS), defining its scope and highlighting its contributions to the accessibility of scientific knowledge. He emphasized the benefits of transparency and interdisciplinary collaborations in the shift towards openness in research practices and shared strategies for practicing OS, particularly utilizing open-access publishing platforms. He finished the session by providing situational examples for analysis and discussion on scholarly communication and OS.

Session 2: The Publications Landscape by Dr. Mohamed Zahir
Dr. Mohamed Zahir discussed the significance of publications in disseminating research findings and their role in academic recognition and advancement. He provided an overview of the publication process, covering submission, peer review, acceptance, and publication stages. On selecting suitable journals for publication, he encouraged the use of journal finders and considering factors such as relevance and impact. He also pointed out some key considerations for each stage of the publication process, including common reasons for article acceptance and rejection in peer-reviewed journals. Furthermore, Dr. Zahir addressed authorship criteria, ensuring clarity on ethical issues such as ghostwriting and gift authorship. Lastly, he explained the importance of collaboration and acknowledged each author’s contribution to the completion of the article, thereby underlining the significance of teamwork in research endeavors.

Session 3: Introduction to Preprints by Dr. Aneth David
In this session, Dr. Aneth David introduced the concept, history, and characteristics of preprints. She highlighted the principles of openness and transparency, the role of preprints in accelerating the dissemination of research, as well as the benefits, challenges, concerns, and misconceptions related to the use of preprints. She also took participants through the preprints landscape with different options for servers as well as the general process of publishing a preprint. Dr. David gave tips on writing a preprint, including structure and formatting tips. She also discussed navigating preprint servers and their main differences.

Session 4: Hands-on Activities on Preprints
During this session, Dr. David demonstrated how to select a preprint server and the process of preprint submission on different servers given differing interfaces, focus areas and types of articles accepted. The session was finalized by hands-on group activities on the process of submitting a preprint. The demo was followed by collective upload of a preprint (Yona et al., 2024). Participants were then allowed to explore preprints servers on their own based on their interests and upload preprints for those who had them ready. Following the workshop sessions, participants had a chance to engage in networking and collaborative discussions amongst themselves and facilitators. This interactive platform facilitated the exchange of expertise and experiences, it also fostered meaningful connections among attendees. This social component of the training further solidified their understanding of the workshop topics through dialogue and encouraging continued collaboration and knowledge-sharing beyond formal sessions.

Outcomes and Reflections

The workshop was a success. Most of the participants had a low awareness of preprints, but the concept was well received. The majority of the participants were ECRs who immediately saw the benefits of preprints, especially to their careers. This was more so for the participants from biomedical fields such as medicine and nursing, where publishing is not a priority. ECRs in these fields usually lack guidance to publish their works, whether on traditional platforms or as preprints. Participants showed strong interest and curiosity and asked many questions. Post workshop feedback sessions indicated that there was a need for more of the same kind of activities, possibly targeting specific institutions, fields, or even lab groups. We believe that ECRs can be a source of change in scholarly communication. During and following the workshop, a total of 2 preprints were published (Mduda 2024; Yona et al. 2024), contrary to expectations where 10 participants indicated they had manuscripts ready for publishing. Nevertheless, a preprints support group was born out of the workshop where participants and other interested people continue to engage and get support on preprints from ASAPbio fellows.

Acknowledgements
The workshop was funded by ASABio and co-hosted by the Tanzania Human Genetics Organization (THGO) and the Biotechnology Society of Tanzania (BST) under Dr. Aneth David, an ASAPbio fellow.

References
David, A.B., Elkheir, L.Y.M., Dine, R.D., Adamolekun, E., Coates, J.A., 2024. The status and challenges of preprint adoption in Africa. https://doi.org/10.31730/osf.io/y7nqx

Mduda, C.A., 2024. Non-peroxide antibacterial activity of Meliponula (Axestotrigona) ferruginea honey from Tanzania. https://doi.org/10.1101/2024.03.20.585900

Yona, C., Bakari, R., George, S., David, A., 2024. Bibliometric analysis and current status of Leishmaniasis research indexed in Scopus, 2010 -2023. https://doi.org/10.32388/RXCFQE

I was tired of hearing students and colleagues sharing their bad experiences with reviewers. I was tired of working really hard to submit a paper for publication and receiving inconsiderate reviews and editorial decisions. We needed a change of culture in peer review: change it from being just a “Where’s Waldo” game of pointing out flaws and what the paper didn’t do towards fair criticisms based on what’s presented, and also reinforcing the strengths of the work. I believe that peer review can be kind and fair, while still being rigorous.

As with any cultural change, we need to focus on the new generation, the leaders to come, rather than the leaders in place. The new leaders are the ones who’ll drive change. I invited the young Masters, PhDs and postdocs from my community (the Computational Biodiversity Science and Services training program – BIOS²) to design the change they wanted to see in peer review. Some of them have never performed a review before, and it was delightful to see them discovering that they don’t need to wait to be invited – they can contribute to science by commenting on preprints, on specific topics they know about, or specific sections.

From June to November 2023, we met once a month to discuss what it looks like to write kind peer reviews in Ecology and Evolution. In the first meeting, we “reverse-engineered” a good review by going through the PREreview’s Open Reviewers Review Assessment Rubric and brainstorming what we thought was missing from the rubric, thinking about the specificities of our research area. In the following meetings, we reviewed a total of five preprints, all published in PREreview, and had a chat with Daniela Saderi about watching our biases when reviewing scientific products, and with Kristen Thyng about reviewing research software.

By our final meeting, we all had a clear understanding of how preprints and preprints reviews fit into the academic publishing system and felt more empowered and encouraged to review scientific manuscripts. With this knowledge, we got together to brainstorm our own guide for kind peer review in Computational Ecology, which is now published and publicly available on Zenodo.

The Community Project support from ASAPbio was instrumental in keeping participants motivated throughout this journey of learning by practice, and in promoting a welcoming and warm environment where we all felt comfortable to question, comment, and fail forward. The small seeds will now flourish in our own communities, where we’re hosting preprint review clubs, kind peer review training, and talking about preprints. These young leaders are now paving the way for a kinder and more collaborative future in science.