How to improve scientific peer review: Four schools of thought.

Peer review plays an essential role as one of the cornerstones of the scholarly publishing system. There are many initiatives that aim to improve the way in which peer review is organized, resulting in a highly complex landscape of innovation in peer review. Different initiatives are based on different views on the most urgent challenges faced by the peer review system, leading to a diversity of perspectives on how the system can be improved.

The pandemic veneer: COVID-19 research as a mobilisation of collective intelligence by the global research community.

The global research community responded with speed and at scale to the emergence of COVID-19, with around 4.6% of all research outputs in 2020 related to the pandemic. That share almost doubled through 2021, to reach 8.

The experiences of COVID-19 preprint authors: a survey of researchers about publishing and receiving feedback on their work during the pandemic.

The COVID-19 pandemic caused a rise in preprinting, triggered by the need for open and rapid dissemination of research outputs. We surveyed authors of COVID-19 preprints to learn about their experiences with preprinting their work and also with publishing their work in a peer-reviewed journal. Our research had the following objectives: 1.

A science superpower in the wings?

Declaring oneself-or aspiring to become-a global superpower sits uneasily with a British tendency towards self-deprecation. Rather, in this post-Elizabethan, post-Brexit chapter of the United Kingdom's story, public debate is undercut by fear of decline. References to Britain's imperial past are often sidestepped or accompanied by apologies.