The Commons provides a detailed look at refereed preprints, from the scientific content to the role of authors, editors, and reviewers. It is also a blog dedicated to discussing open science, from the development of new tools & platforms, to the policy & funding initiatives that help (or hinder) its progress.
By Thiago Carvalho “Antimicrobial peptides kill microbes. They are positively charged molecules and that attracts them to the negatively charged membranes of bacteria and fungi. They insert themselves into the membrane and create pores or they just rip it apart,…
Caren Norden heads the Cell Biology of Tissue Morphogenesis lab at the Instituto Gulbenkian de Ciência, where she also serves as Deputy Director of Science. Her latest paper was posted as a preprint and submitted to the journal through Review…
Marco Trizzino is an assistant professor at Thomas Jefferson University, in Philadelphia. Dr. Trizzino studies evolutionary genomics, with a focus on transposable elements. SVA transposons are the topic of his recent refereed preprint at Review Commons.
Our latest survey shows that the overwhelming majority of our authors and reviewers support our journal agnostic peer-review process and consider the elimination of multiple cycles of peer review to be the most important benefit of Review Commons. Authors also…
In a major step toward promoting preprint peer review as a means of increasing transparency and efficiency in scientific publishing, Review Commons is updating its policy: as of 1 June 2022, peer reviews and the authors’ response will be publicly…
EMBO, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, eLife/Sciety, and the Knowledge Futures Group have recently launched a collaborative pilot project called DocMaps. The project’s goal is to create a common framework that will allow the machine-readable tracking of the peer reviews of individual preprints.
As of August 1, 2021, Review Commons will require all authors to post their manuscript as a preprint, prior to transfer to an affiliate journal. In return, all the affiliate journals provide authors with extended scooping protection.
The pandemic has shown how preprints accelerate the dissemination of research findings, but it also highlights the crucial importance of peer review.