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Code of Conduct

This code of conduct covers all community members participating in digital and physical contexts managed by PREreview such as, but not limited to, our website, Slack community, and in-person events.

Our pledge

In the interest of fostering an open and brave environment we, as leadership, contributors, and maintainers, pledge to make participation in our project and our community a harassment-free experience for everyone, regardless of background, family status, gender, gender identity, or expression, marital status, sex, sexual orientation, native language, age, ability, race and/or ethnicity, caste, national origin, socioeconomic status, religion, geographic location, and any other dimension of diversity.

We founded PREreview because we believe scholarship should be equitable, transparent, and collaborative. We believe it is our duty as researchers at any level of our career to contribute to research evaluation in the form of peer review. PREreview provides a space for anyone, independent of their background and career level, to provide constructive feedback to preprints, to learn from and with one another, and to challenge the status quo in the interest of moving towards a more equitable and open peer review ecosystem

Our responsibilities

The PREreview team is responsible for clarifying the standards of acceptable behavior and is expected to take action in response to any instances of unacceptable behavior. Please read below for examples of expected and unacceptable behaviors.

All complaints will be reviewed and investigated and will result in a response determined by the PREreview Safety Team. The PREreview Safety Team consists of PREreview’s Director, Community Manager, Product Manager, and Lead Developer. Other staff members or community experts may be consulted on particular reports as appropriate and necessary to investigate those reports and determine any consequences.

Where and how to report Code of Conduct violations

Instances of abusive, harassing, or otherwise unacceptable behavior should be reported by filling out our report form with the option to be anonymous, emailing report@prereview.org, or by messaging @safety on the PREreview Community Slack. In the report, please describe the violation of this Code of Conduct and the context in which it occurred. The more detail you provide the easier it will be for us to act on the reported misconduct.

If you email us, please use “Code of Conduct Violation Report” as your subject line. If you decide to report the violation via the form and you wish us to follow up with you, please be sure to include your email address at the end of the form.

Response protocol

In response to any Code of Conduct violation report, the PREreview Safety Team will:

Expected behaviors

Example behaviors that contribute to creating a positive environment include:

Be the best community member you can be

By matching your actions with your words, you become a person others want to join in the community. Your actions influence others to behave and respond in ways that are valuable and appropriate for our shared outcomes. Hold yourself and others accountable for inclusive behaviors.

Prohibited behaviors

Examples of unacceptable behaviors by participants include, but are not limited to:

Competing interest

At PREreview we ask all contributors to disclose any competing interest (CI) that may exist between a review author (or affiliated organization) and the author(s) (or affiliated organization) of the reviewed preprint.

In the context of this platform, a competing interest is anything that interferes with, or could reasonably be perceived as interfering with, the objective of a review of a preprint on PREreview.

Examples of competing interests that would be considered a violation of this Code of Conduct if not disclosed include, but are not limited to:

Competing interests matter because they can introduce perceived or actual bias in the evaluation of the preprint that can have repercussions all the way to the journal acceptance of that manuscript.

If you think that you have a potential competing interest with the authors or the organization to which the author(s) is affiliated, please do disclose it in your PREreview. A failure to disclose a competing interest is considered a violation of this Code of Conduct and will be treated accordingly.

To read more about competing interests in peer review, please refer to the PLOS Peer Reviewer Center’s resources. They provide a very useful checklist for you to self-evaluate your possible competing interests in relation to a manuscript you wish to review or comment on.

License and attribution

This Code of Conduct is distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike license.

The content of this page was adapted from the Contributor Covenant, version 1.4, from 2i2c Code of Conduct, and from Plos Peer Reviewer Center. If you have questions about this Code of Conduct, please contact us at contact@prereview.org.

Thank you for being a good community member!