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Category: Project

Description: Peer review is a key component of the current academic publishing landscape, and yet, the vast majority of early career scientists never receive formal training on how to conduct such reviews. PEERSPECTIVES is a semester-long course for PhD students in the health data sciences that provides theoretical background knowledge needed for high-quality peer review practice and a thorough, critical examination of the scientific publishing system and processes. These elements will be supplemented by hands-on workshops, in which “live” BMJ manuscripts will be reviewed in small groups under the supervision of experienced editor-mentors. We hope this combination of lectures and workshops will equip students not only to provide more concise, comprehensive and coherent feedback effectively, but also to write higher quality manuscripts of their own. In addition, the course will offer students the opportunity to listen in on a manuscript meeting of the BMJ editorial staff. This training is of extreme relevance and importance to our target group of up-and-coming scientists, the large majority of whom will complete publication-based PhD dissertations. In its current format, we have designed the course for methods-focused doctoral students in the domains of medical, biomedical and population health in collaboration with the British Medical Journal (BMJ). To evaluate whether the completion of this program within the ongoing doctoral studies framework has an effect on the quality of peer-review among motivated doctoral students, we will conduct a confirmatory study with pre-/post- assessment.