PREreview is an open-source platform for the open review of preprints, home to an international community of individuals committed to improving the scholarly evaluation process. Peer review determines which research is funded, published, and recognized, shaping what both the scientific community and society consider knowledge. Our work is a direct response to the flawed way this process is undertaken. Behind closed doors, a handful of unpaid reviewers – selected opaquely and often through personal connections – use subjective criteria to decide the fate of a research article. Reviewers often undergo minimal training for this crucial task and may be unaware of how to address issues of bias and systemic oppression, leading to a perpetuation of current inequities within scholarly publishing.

For example, we see the majority of journal publications coming from the Global North (Tennant JP, 2020) along with an under-representation of female authors and the highest cited early career authors coming from so-called ‘prestigious’ institutions (Krauss, A., Danús, L. & Sales- Pardo, 2023). This is in line with the demographics of peer review gatekeepers, where we also see an overrepresentation of male gatekeepers who predominantly live in North America and Europe (Murray et al., 2019).

At PREreview, we are reimagining peer review as an open, inclusive, and community-driven process. We empower early-career researchers (ECRs) and historically excluded scholars to review preprints in a way that is both meaningful and rewarding. By harnessing preprints, we create opportunities for transparent evaluation, mentorship, and constructive feedback.

The PREreview.org platform currently supports preprints from across 30 different preprint servers, with more added regularly, including an integration via COAR Notify where preprint authors can submit feedback requests to PREreview’s global community of over 3,300 reviewers at the point of submission on bioRxiv, SciELO preprints, and Preprints.org. The recently launched request a review feature currently has feedback requests for 1,007 preprints, with 8.5% having received a review in response, a number which is growing and shows the potential for greater matching of reviewers with preprint topics of interest. Reviewers can review in any language, and we are working on localizing and translating PREreview into other languages in collaboration with our global community, starting with Latin American Spanish and Brazilian Portuguese.

In this talk, we’ll explore PREreview’s community-driven approach to transform peer review, rooted in values of equity, openness, and collaboration. We’ll highlight key features of our community-informed open preprint review platform and our training programs aimed at fostering fair, constructive feedback while addressing systemic biases. Training in peer review ensures that more voices – especially from underrepresented groups – are included in shaping research and that feedback received by authors is constructive rather than unhelpful or potentially harmful. Over the last year, we have trained more than 125 experts who joined us from a wide range of career levels, disciplines, and over 30 different countries. Our annual Champions cohort has also adapted our openly available resources for peer reviewers in their local communities, reaching approximately 250 participants worldwide in 2024. We will also demonstrate the impact and potential of a more inclusive peer review system and share ways to get involved in revolutionizing research evaluation.