Why request public feedback on your preprint?

By explicitly requesting public feedback on your preprint, you’ll help readers feel welcome to share their comments. Specifying the time frame and type of feedback you need can ensure the input you get is more likely to be constructive.

How to do it

Tweet out a request, or leave a comment on your own preprint inviting public review. Here’s a suggested format:

“My co-authors and I welcome public feedback on our preprint, ideally by [DATE]. We are especially interested in [statistics, etc].”

If you’re interested in finding these requests within the bioRxiv comment section, you can use see Vincent Rubinetti’s code.

Other ways to request feedback

On PREreview, any researcher (including authors) can request feedback on any preprint with a DOI as well as provide feedback to preprints in the form of rapid and full PREreviews.

Starting in July 2021, eLife will exclusively review preprints and post public reviews on them.

You can use our registry, ReimagineReview, to identify projects that review preprints. The following listings represent those that allow authors to submit their own preprints for feedback.

James Fraser (UCSF) has adopted a policy in his lab compact to post all reviews as comments on bioRxiv (emphasis ours):

“We believe that transparency in peer review is critical to improving the quality and professionalism of reviews. We only review manuscripts that have been posted on BioRxiv and we post our peer review comments publicly on Biorxiv as well. Peer review is also viewed as a training opportunity and all lab members who co-review with JF are credited for their contribution to the review. JF recognizes that he holds certain privileges that allow him to post peer review comments non-anonymously without fear of repercussion. Unfortunately, this is not the case for all researchers. JF is willing to post reviews on behalf of anyone, both in and outside of the Fraser lab, who wishes to remain anonymous. Guidelines for how to engage in respectful and constructive peer review can be found on the Peer Review in the Life Sciences course page.”

You can use our registry, ReimagineReview, to identify projects that review preprints. The following listings represent those that allow authors to submit their own preprints for feedback.

Preprints have great potential to democratize access and production of knowledge. However, researchers tend to be most aware of work occurring within their own network; highlighting and sharing only these preprints can contribute to the Matthew effects and limit readers’ exposure to a sliver of available science. Looking outside of the obvious candidates when highlighting or amplifying preprints can help. You can:

• Search regional servers. Because some servers may overrepresent certain countries (Abdill et al., 2020), check regional preprint servers such as AfricArxiv and RINarxiv to find papers that may be less visible to your colleagues outside those regions, or include the names of specific countries in your search to find work from them. 
• Publish and search preprints in various languages. An increasing number of preprint repositories accept submissions in more than one language. Make strategic searches by keywords in English and their translations to your mother tongue. Check if a preprint already has one or more translations (of the abstract) available. For more on the importance of multilingualism, see the Helsinki initiative. 
• Find untweeted preprints. For example, when looking through bioRxiv for her #365preprints project (see below), Prachee Avasthi recommends selecting preprints that have yet to be tweeted. 

Thanks to Dasapta Erwin Irawan, Jo Havemann, and Stefano Vianello for their input.

In addition to using established tools, you can also create your own preprint highlights in a variety of formats.

For example, Prachee Avasthi uses Twitter Spaces to host a short audio conversation about an interesting preprint every day.

Jonny Coates, Emma Wilson, and John Howard are starting a podcast for longer discussions:

(Note that we’re piloting a program to provide support for mission-oriented expenses as part of our community program)

Preprint feedback has the potential to not only help authors and readers, but also to identify potential reviewers and editorial board members for journals. Unfortunately, finding preprint reviews authored by a particular individual and linking them to other useful information (such as disciplinary keywords) remains challenging. The Preprint Reviewer Recruitment Network addresses these issues by enabling willing researchers to share preprint feedback as work samples for review by participating journals.

We expect that the network will:

• Provide journals and publishers with access to pools of potential reviewers or editorial board members
• Help researchers, especially ECRs, break into reviewing or editing roles
• Recognize the efforts of researchers who participate in public reviewing and commenting on preprints

The Preprint Reviewer Recruitment Network will run as a 6-month long pilot from 2021-07-21 to 2022-01-21. Results, such as the number of reviewers who volunteered and the number of invitations extended by each journal, will be reported at asapbio.org.

We are thrilled to announce that we are running a trial to test the crowd review approach for preprint review. We invite cell biologists with an interest in preprints and preprint feedback to join this trial.

Why is ASAPbio running this trial?

While there is increasing interest in review activities around preprints, the level of public commenting and reviewing on preprints remains low overall. To explore review modalities that may foster participation in preprint review, we are adapting the crowd review model pioneered by the journal Synlett to preprints, to learn whether this approach provides an engaging format for researchers to participate in preprint review, and a way to generate public reviews on preprints.

What does the trial involve?

The trial will involve bioRxiv preprints in cell biology which authors have requested feedback on. We will coordinate a group of researchers interested in contributing feedback (‘the crowd’) and will circulate a paper or two weekly to the crowd, inviting comments over the following week. Crowd members can then comment on the full paper or parts of the study. After the commenting period, a collective synthesis of the comments will be posted as a public review via bioRxiv’s Transparent Review in Preprints (TRiP) workflow.

The trial will run for three months starting in August. We hope that this format will encourage broad participation in preprint feedback, particularly by early career researchers who are often underrepresented in journal review.

Get involved!

Join the crowd preprint review trial to develop your reviewing skills and help us build trust in preprints. We invite cell biologists to sign up for participation as crowd preprint reviewers.

eLife has announced that from July 2021, it will exclusively review preprints and post public reviews on them. According to the press release,

“eLife is refocusing its editorial processes towards transforming preprints into ‘refereed preprints’ that include a public assessment of the work prepared by the journal’s reviewers and editors. This will involve providing updated instructions for its reviewers to capture what should and should not be included in public reviews, and modifying its editorial processes to focus on the production of these reviews. “Our plan is to work closely with our editors, reviewers, authors and readers to optimise the process by which public reviews are created and their utility to the diverse audiences we hope to reach,” Eisen says.”

The SciELO journal Educação em Revista enacted a similar policy in February of 2021.

Preprint feedback has the potential to not only help authors and readers, but also to identify potential reviewers and editorial board members for journals. Unfortunately, finding preprint reviews authored by a particular individual and linking them to other useful information (such as disciplinary keywords) remains challenging. The Preprint Reviewer Recruitment Network addresses these issues by enabling willing researchers to share preprint feedback as work samples for review by participating journals.

We expect that the network will:

• Provide journals and publishers with access to pools of potential reviewers or editorial board members
• Help researchers, especially ECRs, break into reviewing or editing roles
• Recognize the efforts of researchers who participate in public reviewing and commenting on preprints

The Preprint Reviewer Recruitment Network will run as a 6-month long pilot from 2021-07-21 to 2022-01-21. Results, such as the number of reviewers who volunteered and the number of invitations extended by each journal, will be reported at asapbio.org.