Peerspectives
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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:
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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 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.