Storytelling for Science

Let's get opinionated... Peer review is still the cornerstone of quality research. This has been repeated by so many during #PeerReviewWeek2023 , it almost lost its meaning to me. I participated in this conversation wholeheartedly, as a freelancer with a variety of roles, from content review to integrity audits.  I’m no longer in academia, but I did my stint there: it’s hard to imagine that many PhD students and postdocs get excited by performing their first peer review. It often results from an invitation trickle-down and, although it can be regarded as a learning opportunity, peer review is hard, time-consuming, unpaid, and often unrecognized work. Open participation is often regarded by researchers as the fairer, more constructive and productive process, leading to improvement in the quality of the finished version of the works. This is the iterative version of having a preprint published in a stable server, with access to all versions of the work, and “comments on”.   The

It was OASPA's Conference on Open Scholarship , Peer Review Week , and then COPE's Publication Integrity Week . Starting 23rd October, will be International Open Access Week .  Too much networking... 😫   I needed a detox between very socially active weeks. So, I turned to reading.  I read on themes that piqued my interest after thinking about the way in which scholarly publishing has been changing in recent years. 📖 This week's only post (this one) is a listicle... but my thoughts have been brewing for more to come. In the mean time, here's what has been keeping me occupied. General writing/thinking: On Writing Well: The Classic Guide to Writing Nonfiction Thinking, Fast and Slow Bittersweet: How Sorrow and Longing Make Us Whole    Peer review and critical thinking: The Peer Review Process - A Complete Guide Redefining Healthcare Through Blockchain: The Next Era of Medical Innovation Why should I do a peer review? And you? What has been in your radar as insightful an