At Nature Methods, we frequently receive review reports that incorporate expertise from a co-reviewer, most often early-career researchers (ECRs), who collaborate with their advisors to gain hands-on experience or provide technical assessments. It is also not uncommon for reviewers to consult computational experts in their labs when reviewing code. However, these valuable contributions have often gone unacknowledged.

Over the past few years, we and other Nature Portfolio journals have made ad hoc efforts to credit co-reviewers by manually adding their names in our manuscript tracking system and recording their reviewing activity, as well as to credit this activity on published papers, but this practice has been inconsistent. As a result, reviewers may have had varied experiences across submissions.

Starting this month Nature Methods, together with Nature Aging1, is launching a formal co-reviewing initiative to ensure that ECRs receive proper credit. Here, we use the term ECRs broadly to refer co-reviewers, including but not limited to PhD students, postdoctoral researchers, bioinformaticians and research technicians. Our colleagues at Nature2, Nature Communications3 and Nature Reviews journals4 have already implemented similar co-reviewing initiatives. The initial uptake has been promising. Approximately 17% of manuscripts reviewed for Nature have included an ECR reviewer since the project began earlier this year. Between January 2024 and March 2025, roughly 10% of reviewers who accepted invitations to review for Nature Communications opted to involve an ECR in their report. We are pleased to see that the initial data show that inviting ECRs in the peer review is already contributing to a more balanced gender representation within our reviewer pool. To maintain consistency across Nature Portfolio, we have adopted a similar workflow.

Here’s how it works:

  • Invitation. When we invite reviewers, we now offer an option to involve a co-reviewer and ask the invited reviewers to provide the ECR’s name and email address. We recommend involving no more than two ECRs per review, as mentorship tends to be more effective with direct guidance.

  • Roles and responsibilities. The invited reviewer remains responsible for submitting the joint report and is accountable for its content. ECR co-reviewers are guided to click through the system and answer optional demographic questions to receive formal credit. They may also provide confidential comments directly to the editor via the “Remarks to the Editor” section.

  • Recognition. As part of our reviewer recognition program, both the invited reviewer and the ECR may opt to be named on the final published paper, in acknowledgment of their contribution. To preserve reviewer confidentiality, however, an ECR cannot be named if the invited reviewer chooses to remain anonymous. In all cases, review activity is recorded in our manuscript tracking system and can be verified via ORCID.

  • Feedback. After co-reviewing, we invite both the invited reviewer and ECR to complete a brief survey. We would be grateful to have feedback that will help us to refine our process, whether you participate in this project or not.

From an editorial perspective, involving ECRs expands our reviewer pool, brings up-to-date technical expertise, and fosters a more inclusive peer review system. We believe the formal inclusion of ECRs helps recognize their intellectual contributions as well as promotes transparency and scholarly responsibility from the early stages of researchers’ careers. Importantly, we hope this co-reviewing initiative will encourage more ECRs to engage in peer review, gaining practical experience that sharpens their critical thinking, strengthens their abilities to assess scientific rigor, and builds confidence in evaluating research papers. Participation in peer review is, we believe, a valuable learning opportunity that supports their career development as future independent reviewers and authors.

If you are an ECR, we encourage you to discuss co-reviewing opportunities with your advisor. To help you get started, we offer a free online masterclass course, developed by Nature Portfolio journal editors and researchers, to learn how to review manuscripts effectively. In the future, the Nature Portfolio journals aim to launch featured webinars and more training materials to bolster your reviewing skills and confidence.

New cross-journal trial: light microscopy reporting checklist

We are also excited to announce a separate effort to improve the peer review of manuscripts that use light microscopy as a method. This month we are beginning a cross-journal trial to improve experimental reporting in papers presenting such data. The effort is meant to address a reporting crisis in light microscopy, in which details concerning samples, sample preparation, instrumentation, acquisition, data processing and data analysis are severely under-reported across the literature5.

In practice, we will ask our authors to fill out a detailed reporting checklist for their light microscopy data at the first round of revision, which will then be assessed by reviewers during the second round of review. The checklist was developed by editors at Nature Cell Biology, Nature Communications, Nature Methods and Nature Structural and Molecular Biology with guidance from the international microscopy group QUAREP-LiMi6 and represents a minimal set of reporting requirements.

After the trial period, we will gauge the benefits of the proposed reporting checklist on the basis of author and reviewer surveys with the intent of refining light microscopy reporting standards. The checklist supplements our existing Reporting Summary. We have taken a similar approach for macromolecular structure manuscripts, where authors are required to complete supplemental reporting tables based on the structure determination methods; for example, cryo-electron microscopy. We hope these collectively efforts will usher in a new era of reporting, reproducibility and data reuse in microscopy.

We hope these initiatives will recognize ECRs’ efforts, foster inclusivity and elevate the reproducibility of published research. If you are interested in learning more about the peer review process at Nature Methods, we encourage you to read previous Editorials7,8. We look forward to your participation and feedback as we continue to refine our peer review processes.