Trainings

PREreview offers a variety of open, preprint peer review training workshops for early career researchers (ECRs), researchers from historically marginalized communities, and researchers from institutions who want to transform their peer review practices for the better. We use preprints in our training process to increase accessibility to the peer review process, as preprints are freely available, and to maximize the utility of the feedback, as preprints are available prior to certification by a journal.

Current offerings

PREreview currently offers two kinds of training workshops centered on issues of equity, diversity, and inclusion: PREreview Open Reviewers and PREreview Open Grant Reviewers. Contact us at community@prereview.org to discuss which type of workshop is best for your organization and options for tailoring our workshop content for your organization’s needs.

PREreview Open Reviewers

2-Hour Workshops

These introductory workshops focus on the basics of open, preprint peer review and becoming aware of biases present in the scholarly publication process.

What you’ll learn: Participants will learn the basics of providing clear, constructive, and actionable feedback, alongside strategies for identifying and mitigating personal bias when reviewing others’ work.

Multi-session workshops

These multi-session trainings run approximately 4-6 hours in total and offer opportunities to practice structured review and to address potential biases collaboratively with real preprints chosen by the group for review. These workshops culminate in live-streamed journal clubs facilitated by PREreview staff for participants to review a preprint together.

What you’ll learn: Participants will learn how to author a structured preprint review while limiting personal and systemic bias in their evaluation of the work. They will also learn how to review a preprint collaboratively in a journal club setting with facilitation by PREreview staff.

Open Reviewers Toolkit

The Open Reviewers Toolkit comprises of three guides to help with the unbiased composition and assessment of research manuscripts' review. The guides are openly available for download on Zenodo under CC-BY 4.0 license.

• The Bias Reflection Guide is a tool to help a reviewer assess their own biases guiding them through a non-judgmental, self-reflective process.
• The Reviewer Guide is for anyone reviewing a research manuscript. It provides a comprehensive, step-by-step framework for the reviewer to use while they are composing a review
• The Review Assessment Rubric is for anyone evaluating a research manuscript’s review. The rubric comprises 10 statements for which the evaluator is asked to provide a score and a written comment to help improve the review.

PREreview Open Grant Reviewers

PREreview Open Grant Reviewers is a training workshop designed to guide grant reviewers in the equitable assessment of grant applications. Our goal is to engage and train a pool of diverse, socially-conscious, and anti-racist grant reviewers.

2-Hour Workshops

Open Grant Reviewers is currently offered as a 2-hour webinar but can be modified to provide greater support and depth of learning. Throughout the workshop, reviewers are encouraged to identify and address biases in the grant review process using our training materials, which include a bias reflection guide. Our curriculum includes space for debate-based learning and open discussions among the reviewers.

What you’ll learn: Participants will learn a broad understanding of what systems of oppression are and how they show up in grant application review; as well as strategies to recognize, self-assess, and address bias in the context of grant review. Participants will also gain an understanding of how to review a grant application striving for constructive, clear, and actionable feedback.

Upcoming training events

Peer Review Week Free Community Workshops

As part of Peer Review Week 2023, we are excited to offer two free Open Reviewers workshops on September 25th 2023.

You’ll learn how the PREreview platform works, how to define "bias" and how it shows up in scholarly peer review alongside strategies to self-assess and provide clear, constructive, and actionable feedback to manuscripts.

Registrations are on an individual basis and are limited to 30 participants. Please only register for one session.

• Workshop 1 - 25 September at 08:00 - 10:00 UTC (find your local time here)
• Workshop 2 - 25 September at 16:00 - 18:00 UTC (find your local time here)

Join the PREreview community Slack

The PREreview community is now on Slack! Join us to connect with like-minded peers and to continue conversations with colleagues and other participants from PREreview training workshops.

Sign up here for your invitation to join us on Slack!

Questions?

Please share them with us at community@prereview.org.