Peerspectives

About this Wiki

This page was designed 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 was designed to provide researchers with modern training and insights into the structure, purpose, and conduct of the peer-review and editing processes in scientific journals.

Scientific peer review is a crucial pillar of scientific quality control and academic publishing; yet, most scientists never receive formal training on its purpose or conduct.

Structure of the Peerspectives course

Peerspectives was designed to be a semester-long course developed for integration into graduate biomedical sciences curricula. This course can be hosted entirely online and was designed with flexibility in mind, making it adaptable to various resource levels, time frames, 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.

Despite a lack of formal training in peer review, scientists are expected to contribute to,  Peerspectives is an initiative that addresses this training gap.

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 (albeit controversial) emphasis on scientific publications in cumulative publication-based dissertations, university incentive structures and in career trajectories in academia, peer review training opportunities are rarely, if ever, including in graduate training curricula. This motivation drove us to create the Peerspectives peer review training program for PhD students and other ECRs in the biomedical sciences. Peerspectives introduces participants to the modern scientific publishing landscape and the actors within this system. The course allows students 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 (bio)medical 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, who have also been very successful and valuable contributors to the course.

The course can be readily adapted to other scientific disciplines or career stages. However, when tailoring it for a new context, it is essential to align the content and structure with the specific needs of the target audience.

• Must tailor the course to a discipline. One-size fits all solutions would be difficult to work with and would make the quality of the course suffer

Learning Outcomes of the Course

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

Course Structure

Our semester-long hybrid approach to training combines a series of interactive lectures with reflection assignments to promote fruitful group discussions. Once the lectures are complete, students attend workshops, where they collaborate in small groups to review “live” manuscripts from a partnering scientific journal under the guidance of an experienced mentor with editing experience. The Peerspectives approach uniquely integrates participants into collaborative peer review in a mentored environment.

Block 1: Lectures

Narrative + rationale

Homework assignments

Narrative + rationale

Homework assignments are discussed and reviewed during each lecture.

Block 2: Workshops

Narrative, rationale

• 4x à 3 hours (with breaks)
• 4 participants per EM
• online
• student-led
• other students contribute in the preparation
• mentor provides guidance while students drive the discussion
• cleanish report at the end
• EM submits to the journal

Pre- and Post-Course Assignments (optional)

These assignments are a good exercise for participants to understand the complexity of a peer review before formal instruction, and see growth from the beginning to the end of the course.