How Preprint Journal Clubs Train the Next Generation of Peer Reviewers

The volume of academic writing is increasing rapidly, outpacing the scientific community’s ability to critically evaluate it. This makes it increasingly important to equip the next generation of researchers with the skills required to conduct rigorous peer review.

However, formal university curricula rarely include peer-review training. Universities spend years teaching students how to design experiments and analyse data, while training in manuscript evaluation is often left to informal instruction.

So how can young researchers, particularly students and postdocs, develop a critical eye?

Using preprints to teach peer review

Preprints provide an opportunity for trainees to practise reviewing manuscripts outside the formal journal peer-review process. Several initiatives have been established with this goal.

For example, Preprint Club is a cross-institutional journal club run by an international group of universities. It allows early-career researchers to select manuscripts for discussion and learn from their experiences alongside colleagues, senior researchers and faculty mentors. PREreview is another platform where researchers can openly review and discuss preprints.

Inspired by these efforts, we partnered with the Bakar ImmunoX Initiative, a research programme at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), to launch our own preprint journal club, ImmunoX Preprint JC, for the 2025–26 academic year.

We believe the greatest value of journal clubs is that they help young researchers build confidence and expertise in peer review. Trainees participate in discussions at every level, from shaping how the club operates and how preprints are graded to leading journal-club sessions.

Other institutions may be able to adapt this model, which combines practical experience, mentoring and relationship building to support the development of junior researchers.

How the ImmunoX preprint journal club works

Monthly ImmunoX Preprint JC sessions follow a series of steps. First, a postdoc selects immunology-related preprints posted to the bioRxiv server. The postdoc then chooses an ImmunoX faculty member to act as a “coach”. Together, they evaluate the preprints according to scientific quality, impact and novelty.

The manuscripts and scoring rubrics are shared with the broader ImmunoX community before the conference. During the meeting, the postdoc gives a 20-minute presentation outlining the preprint’s strengths and proposing experiments that could improve the study.

Attendees then spend 5–10 minutes discussing the strengths and limitations of the preprint. The manuscript is subsequently scored anonymously for scientific quality, impact and novelty.

The publication status of each paper is tracked over several weeks and evaluated by the ImmunoX community. We plan for presenters of the highest-scoring preprints to write commentaries with their coaches over a six-month period. These commentaries will then be shared online with the ImmunoX community and the public.

Tracking whether community reviews predict publication

The primary goal of ImmunoX Preprint JC is to assess whether community-based evaluations reflect whether preprints will ultimately be accepted by a journal. The data could establish benchmarks for how well the community, and trainees in particular, assesses the scientific merit of preprints.

The Immunology Preprint Club compared the scores given by different groups to the same preprint at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York City.

We also compared the scores with the subsequent performance of the preprints. Most of the preprints we have reviewed so far remain unpublished, but the highest-scoring papers have since been published in Cell¹. This suggests that community-based evaluations can, at least in some cases, identify studies that meet the criteria of a prestigious journal. The survey results for 2025–26 are available on the ImmunoX website.

Identifying bias in peer review

Evaluating the results of a journal club can reveal cases in which participants correctly identify high-quality research, while also helping them detect potential bias. For example, we have noticed that manuscripts with highly cited senior authors tend to receive higher scores during journal-club sessions.

This pattern could mean that the community has reliably identified rigorous science. It could also reflect an unconscious bias in which an author’s reputation is associated with the quality of the research.

Learning to recognise this distinction can help trainees develop the self-awareness needed for a fairer peer-review process. In the future, we plan to withhold manuscript author names until the end of each scoring session.