Pavithran Narayanan

Ah okay!

Haha, yes, sounds a bit like it! 🥲 It's interesting that eLife editors think that the peer review model encourages group thinking!!

🔊Four weeks to go until OpenFest 2025! 🥳Join us ONLINE for sessions on building diverse and inclusive research cultures, recognition practices, publishing ecosystems, open research communities, and libraries.

Full programme and registration links below:

(3/3) These said, there needs to be systematic, statistically meaningful studies on if & how this model makes a (qualitative or quantitative) difference, if any! Whatever their attitude is, eLife is doing this as an experiment & I'd like it to be judged on its merit!

(2/3) And if it encourages group thinking & coteries, it would be visible to & they'd be held accountable (at least the reviews if not the reviewers themselves) by the authors &/or entire community as the reviews as well author responses are published.

(1/3) "which has been argued to" sounds a bit loose. I've come across testimonials from many researchers who apparently find this model better compared to the conventional peer review. Of course, it's very subjective, and I don't have any statistics on it!

Great initiative by Wiley! The publisher has started marking retracted papers in reference lists. When you click on the retraction notice, you can also see the date and reason for the retraction.
All publishers should adopt this practice. But also screen references during submission.

(2/2) And "consensus calibration" does remind me of @elife.bsky.social's "consultative peer review" process where peer reviewers & editors consult with each other before the reviews are passed on to the authors! #PeerReview

(1/2) @maddipow.bsky.social draws an interesting comparison here regarding #PeerReview. I think this could really benefit bad reviews but probably not rogue reviews - the latter consisting of bias, rudeness & deliberate mishandling!

One thing it underscores - Peer review training is essential!

Any suggestions/recommendations for a tool that would allow the audience at a conference to ask questions, but...

a. Those could only be seen by a moderator, with the relevant app and permissions (so that the moderator would ask the question on the person's behalf)
b. can be asked anonymously

Thx!

And "throwing more money" needs to be done after extensive consultations & deliberations with experts and diverse stakeholders!

There have already been some initiatives like @reviewercredits.bsky.social that do reward peer reviewers in non-monetary terms. I think the best way would be to put money in #training peer reviewers and encouraging #preprint review services! #PeerReview

A lot of people & organizations to thank for this shift! @biorxivpreprint.bsky.social @richardsever.bsky.social @johninglis.bsky.social @asapbio.bsky.social @jessicapolka.bsky.social @prereview.bsky.social @neurosarda.bsky.social @reviewcommons.org @embo.org @elife.bsky.social, etc., etc. etc.! 👏

I think there's no "until" as papers are vetted, (re)interpreted & adjudged continuously! And the community needs to evolve (& we need to help in the process) to assess, debate, disagree with studies instead of just looking upto some *experts*!

That's exactly what people are trying to do with preprint reviews! #Preprint #Review

Narrative CVs were projected to have the potential to solve this issue at least to an extent. But, I don't know to what extent it has been useful & how much it is being used!

So well put by (shall I say, the one & only? 😄) @richardsever.bsky.social! #Preprints #PeerReview #ScientificPublishing

IMO the fact alone that something claims to be "peer-reviewed" is fairly meaningless, so much do standards vary. One can have some faith based on knowledge of individual journals' processes but if you don't know anything about the journal, then... 1/n

@fionahutton.bsky.social @drpeterrodgers.bsky.social @damianpattinson.bsky.social:

@doaj.bsky.social & @mattjhodgkinson.scicomm.xyz.ap.brid.gy have called for suggestions/comments from the community w.r.t. some fundamental questions on #indexing criteria! #SciPub

blog.doaj.org/2025/07/09/w...

Thanks for the shout out! We work closely with the relationship between research assessment and scholarly communication, and our last guest blog posts by @metaror.bsky.social, @f1000publishing.bsky.social and @elife.bsky.social explore these connections, innovations in publishing and peer review

Oh, and I forgot to add the crucial aspect of research #assessment & #evaluation, on which @coarassessment.bsky.social, @dorassessment.bsky.social, etc. are doing some fantastic work!

As I said before, this is precisely what a whole lot of people including @asapbio.bsky.social @prereview.bsky.social @metaror.bsky.social @elife.bsky.social @reviewcommons.org @peercommunityin.bsky.social are trying to do! We can't dismiss #preprints just because they're not widely being reviewed!!!

(2/2) But I don't this provides us with reasons to disregard #preprints. Since the article quotes @fleerackers.bsky.social & she was involved in the original study, the 'preprint vs #journal article from the public perspective' debate would benefit from her comments!

(1/2) I'm not surprised - we've seen even researchers googling the IFs of @biorxivpreprint.bsky.social (@richardsever.bsky.social knows better 😄)! It's a dicey topic as public interpretation of even *published* studies is fraught with errors. #SciComm is a work in progress & I think we'll do better!

(3/3) These are not things that could be done in a day or two and, least of all, definitely not by downgrading the culture of #preprinting!

(2/3) The way is to encourage early dissemination, voluntary post-publication review, #replication studies, publication of #null results, to ignore #scooping concerns and a #cultural & #bureaucratic shift that underlies all this (including incentive system, academic culture, etc.)!

(1/3) #Trust in #science cannot come from conventional peer review, as it is not designed for that! It could just be misplaced or cosmetic trust. If that's the case, so many problematic papers, those with apparent #integrity issues couldn't have been published!

That's something we need to see (& actively work towards) going forward and it hardly provides any ground to disregard and dismiss preprinting!

So, I think that is a very difficult thing to do in the conventional, laregly-opaque peer review system, which researchers increasingly find to be a burden. Preprint review is not mandated but done voluntarily and so researchers won't feel pressured into doing it. It's a cultural shift!

It depends on what we actually refer to as #PeerReview. The need of the hour is to reinvent peer review as a whole, encourage #preprint #review and make researchers embrace peer review as an integral part of their own work!