Discussing and reviewing preprints at JCs can change that. The valuable feedback that is collected during the JC can be compiled into a review and sent back to the authors, who then have the chance of integrating that feedback into their work. Furthermore, posting these reviews publicly has the advantage of helping early career researchers or people who are outside of that given scientific field develop their ability to evaluate research with a critical eye. 
The initial goal of our project was to develop guidelines to streamline preprint JCs and review writing, to make it easier for researchers to start preprint JCs at their institutions. When, in our survey, we asked the communities about foreseen potential barriers to preprint JCs, one of the most common answers was simple motivation and time. Furthermore, with preprints being relatively new in the biology community, there may be a limited number of relevant field-specific preprints available at any moment in time. 
We hope to overcome both of those barriers by incentivizing the hosting of preprint JCs, by providing support and training for preprint peer review, and by creating a space to collaboratively engage with preprints and share constructive feedback. We hope that by encouraging the hosting of preprint JCs at research institutions worldwide, the benefits and impact of preprints will be acknowledged and preprinting will become the norm in the scholarly communication of science.  

Our Team

Daniela and Sam are two neuroscientists driven by a common passion for improving the scientific ecosystem by creating a more open and communal way of doing science. As a Mozilla Working Open Workshop project, we have developed PREreview in the open from day one, inspired by the work of Mozilla and OpenCon. Now we want to share what we have learned and help others experience the benefits of an open scientific culture. Since we met in April 2017, we have worked relentlessly in our ‘spare time’ to craft and nurture our desire to see preprints adopted and valued by other scientists. In less than one year, we have grown from having a few Google docs worth of resources on how to start preprint journal clubs, to having built significant community support, with a growing PREreview community members and more than 700 Twitter followers. With the help and support from the members of our community – particularly from what later became our Advisory Board – we have come this far. Now we want to push the dream even further: we want to change the ‘who’ and ‘how’ of scholarly evaluation.
To start reviewing preprints within PREreview, follow this step-by-step guide or watch this video
Here is an example of a review to a preprint that was discussed at the Systems Neuroscience JC at Oregon Health & Science University last spring. 
Please send us your feedback at preprintjc@gmail.com or write a quick comment in the chat icon at the bottom right of of the page. 
Read more about PREreview on our blog post in eLife Labs, our ASAPbio commentary, and an eLIFE Ambassador interview.
Follow us on Twitter: @PREreview_ and #preprintjc