CaitlinDear fellow research practitioners,
For the past year, my team and I have been crafting a study to re-design the peer review experience.
We are all too familiar with the frustrations of the current peer review & publishing tradition. We are not the first to try to make a change. But we ARE bringing to you a pilot study with a different model of reviewer to author interactions, and one designed to probe its potential for further expansion and iteration, until we find, as a community, an experience that brings scientists together in shining light on each other’s discoveries.
The change is quite simple: to create a digital environment that facilitates the feeling of editing, commenting, and discussing a colleague’s manuscript directly. We call this process Peer Improvement.
The task of the Reviewer is to provide a public service to your fellow scientists. First to the Authors of the work: to give them your best input in helping their science stay truthful while showcasing its value. Then to the scientific readership: to help fellow researchers find discoveries that would best facilitate their ongoing endeavors.
The task of the Authors is to accept the Reviewer’s good faith feedback with openness and a willingness to improve. Consider the rewording of conclusions that are better supported by the data. Discuss a better alternative approach that could be implemented in follow up work. Endeavor to make your next study be of even better quality than the current.
What we are hoping to achieve with the Peer Improvement mindset of approaching manuscript review, is to create organic Stacks of Discoveries that can be Curated to the interests of individual scientists, and thus serve the scientific community longitudinally in fostering reproducibility, transparency, and collaboration.
The long term project is Discovery Stack / Discovery Curator. For now, we are bringing to you the first step: the Discovery Stack Pilot.
You’ll find everything on our webpages, from a deepdive into our ethos (the Preamble), to its evolution (History & Vision), to how the study will work (Participant Guide). Every step and item was meticulously produced by your fellow researcher and scientist peers (the Pilot Team).
Today, I am writing to you to celebrate the conclusion of the design phase of the Discovery Stack Pilot, which started in July of last year, and to kick off the implementation phase to start this July!
I can barely believe that We are now officially enrolling study participants! Join the pilot here!
For those who have already enrolled, we Thank you for your patience and faith in us in signing up since the winter or early spring.
If you have or will be enrolling as an Author, be on the lookout for emails (from discoverystack@solvingfor.org) for an official author/manuscript submission form to roll out starting in June.
If you have or will be enrolling as a Reviewer, keep your inbox ready to accept reviewer match invitations starting in July! (From discoverystack@solvingfor.org)
In the meanwhile, we are also recruiting an editor to join the team, in anticipation of the expanding workflow. You can find the detailed description for the editor role here.
If you know someone in your circle who is passionate about improving academic culture, please pass this newsletter along!
Thank you for reading. We look forward to working with you on this exciting project. Together, let’s make peer review what it could be!
Sincerely yours,
Beiyun Caitlin Liu, Ph.D.
Project Lead, Discovery Stack / Discovery Curator
Newsletter July 12, 2024
SolvingFor is announcing the conclusion of the design phase of the Discovery Stack Pilot, which started in July of 2023. Exactly a year since our first Idea Engine meeting!
What a year it has been! A ginormous thank you to the DSDC team and everyone involved, past, present, (& future) for pushing the project to this phase!
And World, the Discovery Stack Pilot is finally ready for you!
The Discovery Stack Pilot (DSP) is born of the necessity of changing the Scientific Peer Review & Publishing landscape to one that benefits scientists and sustains productive academic research. As a community, we realize that drastic changes are needed to make our academic research world more collaborative in discussions around publishing our findings, and we have come together to design a model in which a different peer review experience could exist.
The change is quite simple: to create a digital environment that facilitates the feeling of editing, commenting, and discussing a colleague’s manuscript directly. We call this process Peer Improvement.
A DSP introductory deck is included for details!
In brief:
- The task of the Reviewer is to provide a public service to your fellow scientists.
- First to the Authors of the work: to give them your best input in helping their science stay truthful while showcasing its value.
- Then to the scientific readership: to help fellow researchers find discoveries that could best facilitate their ongoing endeavors.
- The task of the Authors is to accept the Reviewer’s good faith feedback with openness and a willingness to improve.
- Consider the rewording of conclusions that are better supported by the data.
- Discuss a better alternative approach that could be implemented in follow up work.
- Endeavor to make your next study be of even better quality than the current.
We are now inviting YOU to join the effort, take part in testing the Model by Joining the Discovery Stack Pilot study!
For those who have already signed up, we Thank you for your patience and faith in us in having enrolled since this past winter or spring. Be on the lookout for official participant emails to come in August from discoverystack@solvingfor.org
If you know someone in your circle who is passionate about improving academic culture, please pass this newsletter along!
Thank you for reading. We look forward to working with you on this exciting project. Together, let’s make peer review & publishing what we all would wish it to be!
To read the full news post, visit the Solving For Science Newsfeed!
To learn more about the ethos, team, history, implementation, visit the Discovery Stack/Discovery Curator webpages!
Sincerely yours,
Caitlin & Brooke
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