Empowering Tomorrow's Scholars: A Comprehensive Training Initiative for Graduate Students in Scientific Peer Review

This IGE program facilitates the development and implementation of a comprehensive graduate curriculum designed to enhance scientific literacy, peer review skills, and communication capabilities among STEM graduate students. Recognizing these skills’ critical role in advancing scientific knowledge and career progress, this program seeks to equip graduate students with the tools necessary to critically evaluate scientific literature and contribute meaningfully to the peer review process. This innovative curriculum will foster a community of skilled reviewers and effective communicators, accelerating the dissemination of accurate scientific knowledge and improving the quality of scientific research.

The program will immerse graduate students in peer review and publishing processes through hands-on experiences. This includes navigating preprint platforms, evaluating cutting-edge scientific literature with high impact, and participating in peer review processes with the editorial board of a preprint overlay journal. The program aims to equip graduate students to rapidly evaluate preprint articles, providing scientific credibility to unreviewed articles with high societal impacts while combating scientific misinformation.

The pilot program will consist of two cohorts of graduate students to initially develop a curriculum based on broadly applicable open-access online educational materials, including audio and video recordings, written content, and interactive workshops.

Read the project abstract.