3 of 6 - Your Questions - Peer Review Toolbox
‘How do I become a peer reviewer?’ is a common question among Toolbox readers, conference attendees, and people writing in to the journal office. We’ve talked a little about getting invitations to review in past issues and on the PLOS Reviewer Center. Today we’d like to delve deeper into one of our recommendations–showing off your peer review skills by commenting on a posted preprint.
Got questions of your own about peer review? Email us or complete this form.
Preprint comments / Peer reviewing in public
How do authors feel about preprint comments?
A recent bioRxiv study demonstrates the value that authors place on your comments. Surveyed preprint authors cited the desire for feedback as one of their top motivations for posting: 85% said they’d welcome feedback via email, and 55% hoped to receive feedback through public online comments.

PREPRINT COMMENTS IN ACTION

Read a shout out from a happy author to their commenter on Twitter

Preprint Comments at PLOS
PLOS has encouraged editors to consult preprint comments when evaluating manuscripts ever since we first started offering facilitated preprint posting. Now we’re taking it a step further by proactively alerting Associate Editors at four of our journals to preprint comments for the manuscripts they’re handling. Through this pilot program we hope to determine whether public commenting can improve the quality and speed of the peer review process.

PREPRINT COMMENTS IN ACTION

Read a back-and-forth conversation between two research groups on the preprint Nuclear envelope assembly defects link mitotic errors to chromothripsis, now published in Nature

Try it for yourself
Next time you read a preprint on bioRxiv, consider leaving feedback for the authors using the in-system commenting tool. If they’ve submitted to PLOS NTDs, PLOS Pathogens, PLOS Computational Biology or PLOS Genetics we’ll be sure to see it, and either way, the authors will appreciate constructive remarks.

ASK US ANYTHING

Got questions about peer review, publishing, Open Science...or something else?

Ask us on email or twitter or send your question anonymously through our survey. We’d love to include it in a future issue of the Peer Review Toolbox.

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