Lectures

The course begins with 4, three-hour long lectures

Homework assignments + rationale

• 4x à 3 hours (with breaks)
• On Zoom, includes interactive polls, discussions & take-home assignment

The 4 interactive lectures presented in this course aim to provide the knowledge necessary to conduct a peer review. Each one of them has a duration of approximately 3 hours, and are composed for slide presentation, mentor-guide small group workshops and take-home assignments.

The content of the lectures is based on:

• Personal experience of the creators of the course, discussions with many colleagues
• The BMJ Reviewer training materials CITE, experience from The BMJ
• Science Editors’ Handbook CITE
• Scientific publications, commentaries and opinion pieces about peer review

This is an online course, so it is valid to incorporate a few practices that can minimize the occurrence of problems during the presentation. Beforehand, make sure that the link to the online video platform was sent to all involved and works well. A good procedure would be to state the link on Syllabus, so everyone could easily have access to it. A template of the slides presentation is available in this manual, but it is worth updating it according to the time and reality of the program.

The lecturer and student assistant should open the class 05 minutes before the start time, to receive the students. Due to the considerable screen time, a 05-10 minutes break for each hour of class is endorsed.

Below you will find an overview of each lecture, explaining the topics to be explored, materials needed, staff and assignment. It is advisable to pay special attention to the subsection “Responsibilities” as it brings the background work of each lecture.

This manual does not intend to give a detailed step by step on how to conduct the lectures itself, as we expected that the course will be conducted by experienced lecturers. As such, our motivation is to offer instruction to smooth the path of those responsible for planning the lectures.