Peerspectives

About this Wiki

This Wiki was designed and intended to provide a template for educators to integrate Peerspectives into their own academic program. In addition to details regarding the purpose, learning objectives, and structure of the course, we also provide the following: Modifiable lecture slides Email templates used to run the course Suggestions for adapting the course to other disciplines or career stages Lessons learned from previous iterations of the course, tested via trial-and-error Please use the left side panel for navigation, in addition to the search bar at the top of this page.

Overview

What is Peerspectives?

Peerspectives is a highly interactive and engaging course that provides researchers with modern training and insights into the structure, purpose, and conduct of the scholarly peer review and editing processes at scientific journals.

How did Peerspectives start?

Peerspectives was originally conceptualized as a semester-long course that offered as an elective course in the structured PhD program in Health Data Sciences at the Charité. Soon after, we expanded our content to suit a wider audience of early career biomedical scientists.

This course can be hosted entirely online and was created with flexibility in mind, making it adaptable to various resource levels, time frames, career stages, and scientific disciplines.

Why should you run Peerspectives?

Scientific journals publish scholarly articles and provide an important platform for transparent presentation, exchange, and discussion of scientific findings and developments. Peer review plays a fundamental role in ensuring integrity and quality in scientific processes. While the scientific peer review process is not without flaws, learning how to conduct high-quality peer review is an invaluable skill for early career researchers (ECRs). In sharp contrast to the enormous emphasis on scientific publications in cumulative publication-based dissertations, peer review training is rarely, if ever, included in graduate training curricula. Peerspectives seeks to address this training gap.

Peerspectives introduces participants to the modern scientific publishing landscape and the actors within this system. The course allows participants to refine their skills in drafting peer review reports and learn about transparency, reproducibility, and the use of modern methods. Additionally, it simultaneously serves to increase awareness of critical systemic issues including biases, favoritism, and scientific misconduct.

Peerspectives strives to equip early-stage researchers with vital career-related skills and provide them with the chance to reflect on quality control and the role of the professional publishing business in science.

Target audience

Peerspectives originated as a training course for doctoral students in the domains of biomedical sciences and population health with prior epidemiology or biostatistics training. Over time, the course expanded to welcome other early career researchers, such as advanced master’s students, and early-stage postdocs.

The course is flexible and can be adapted to different career stages and scientific disciplines. However, for successful implementation, it is important to customize the content and structure to fit the specific needs of the participants. A generic, one-size-fits-all approach may be impractical and could affect the course’s overall quality.

Course objectives

• Explain the role of scientific journals, editors, and peer reviewers as parts of the scientific process in the field of biomedical sciences
• Promote clear communication and efficiency in the peer review process
• Stimulate critical thinking and constructive, scientific critique
• Encourage transparency and adherence to ethical and methodological guidelines
• Introduce and explore concepts around open science, open-access publishing, and open peer review
• Participants will develop an understanding of what peer reviewers and editors are looking for in scientific writing and improve the quality of participants’ future submission

Course Structure

Our complete semester-long hybrid approach to training combines a series of interactive lectures with reflection assignments to promote fruitful group discussions. Once the lecture series has concluded, the course moves onto a series of peer review workshops.  During these workshops, the participants – under the guidance of an experienced editorial mentor –  collaborate in small groups to peer review “live” manuscripts that are currently under consideration at a partnering scientific journal. The Peerspectives approach uniquely allows participants to engage in collaborative peer review in a mentored environment.

Component 1: Lectures

Peerspectives opens with a series of interactive lectures aimed at equipping participants with essential knowledge of editorial processes and the development of scientific peer review. The lecture component of the course spans over four sessions, with each lecture lasting three hours. However, the number of sessions, their duration, and the topics covered can be modified to align with the target audience, lecturer availability, and scheduling needs.

Take-home assignments

Between lectures, participants complete small exercises designed to reinforce concepts from the previous session and engage in preparatory brainstorming for the next lecture’s topics. These take-home assignments are revisited in the following lecture and serve as a foundation for group discussions.

Component 2: Workshops

The second component of Peerspectives consists of workshops, during which participants collaboratively draft and finalize a peer review report under the supervision of a mentor with peer review and (ideally) editorial experience. Workshops are designed to be participant-led, with the role of workshop leader rotating between participants each week. While the mentor provides guidance and can steer the discussion if needed, participants hold the responsibility for reading the manuscript and drafting a review prior to the workshop.  Participants are expected to shape the peer review (1) in line with their individual scientific expertise, and (2) to apply the peer review knowledge developed in the lectures.

Component 3: Reflection

To maximise learning outcomes, we recommend some kind of reflection activity. This can be in the form of a self-assessment of skills, de-briefing with the mentor after the last workshop, or listening in to an editorial meeting or requesting a meeting with the handling editor to inquire about the submitted peer review reports.

Component 4: Pre- and Post-Course Assignments

These assignments serve to gauge the peer review experience and knowledge of participants before and after formal instruction.