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  • NATURE INDEX

Preprint clubs: why it takes a village to do peer review

A group of early-career researchers have harnessed cross-institutional journal clubs to assess and review immunology preprints.
By
  1. Felix Clemens Richter

    1. Felix Clemens Richter is a postdoctoral researcher at the Medical University of Vienna, Austria.

  2. Ester Gea-Mallorquí

    1. Ester Gea-Mallorquí is a postdoctoral researcher in the Nuffield Department of Medicine at the University of Oxford, UK.

  3. Arthur Mortha

    1. Arthur Mortha is an assistant professor in the Department of Immunology at the University of Toronto, Canada.

  4. Nicolas Ruffin

    1. Nicolas Ruffin is a senior researcher in the Department of Clinical Neuroscience at the Karolinska Institute, Stockholm, Sweden.

  5. Nicolas Vabret

    1. Nicolas Vabret is an assistant professor in the Department of Immunology at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York City, USA.

As early-career researchers (ECRs), we have experienced at first hand the challenges and consequences of navigating the peer-review system. By pursuing careers in academia, we agreed to subject ourselves to the scrutiny of fellow experts in our field, who evaluate the quality of our research and grant proposals. The decisions of these few, often-anonymous individuals have far-reaching effects on career progression, funding opportunities and reputations, both inside and outside the scientific community.

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doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-023-01819-y

References

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  4. Richter, F. C., Gea-Mallorquí, E., Ruffin, N. & Vabret, N. Preprint at bioRxiv https://doi.org/10.1101/2023.01.04.522570 (2023).

  5. Richter, F. C., Gea-Mallorquí, E., Mortha, A., Ruffin, N. & Vabret, N. EMBO Rep. 2023, e5725 (2023).

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