Daniela Saderi co-founded a project that is increasing awareness of preprints — versions of scientific papers that are made available before publication in a peer-reviewed journal — and the value they bring to science and to early career researchers.

The project, PREreview, facilitates pre-publication feedback using a website with toolkits and best practices for journal clubs. The goal is to improve the quality of published scientific output and train early career researchers in scientific peer review.

2018 Mozilla Fellow

Danielle Robinson, Ph.D., then a doctoral candidate in the School of Medicine, was awarded a 2016 Mozilla Fellowship for Science.

Saderi was named a 2018 Mozilla Fellow on Aug. 21, 2018. She was one of six Mozilla Fellowships for Science, which are awarded to researchers “already working to shift research practice to be more collaborative, iterative and open.” The 10-month fellowship begins in September and includes training and support from Mozilla to hone skills around open source, data sharing, open science policy and licensing.

As a neurosciences doctoral candidate in the lab of Stephen David, Ph.D., Saderi conducts research in collaboration with other lab members that combines in vivo electrophysiology, behavior and computational modeling to understand how sound is processed in the brain. She is planning to defend her doctoral thesis in the fall of 2018.  As a Mozilla Fellow, Saderi will further develop the PREreview, which she now co-leads with Samantha Hindle, Ph.D., and Monica Granados, Ph.D.

PREreview grew out of discussions of preprints at journal clubs. These journal club discussions led to the idea to collaboratively write reviews of preprints and the need for a platform that would facilitate that writing process. Saderi and co-founder Hindle wanted to make it easier for scientists to run preprint journal clubs, develop their skills as reviewers and share openly the insights of their discussion.

The next step for Saderi and PREreview’s co-leaders is to develop PREreview as a tool to drive a broader cultural change in the ways science is evaluated and disseminated.

Alongside her work with PREreview and her research, Saderi has worked, with the guidance of Robin Champieux, M.L.S., as a community organizer to promote open science practices in academia as a means to improve reproducibility and collaboration.

Saderi is an advocate of preprints and the importance of peer review of preprints, which are made available when community feedback is most useful. She has a favorite video that explains preprints.

PREreview milestones timeline:

2017

• Saderi and Hindle (then a postdoc at UCSF) meet at the Portland mini-WOW — a Mozilla-organized workshop on running projects in the open – and begin the conversation that led to PREreview.
• Mozilla/Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Mini-Grant funds early beta test of PREreview resources — read the full application.
• PREreview.org site launches, uploading resources begins alongside and building a community of preprint reviewers. @PREreview_ Twitter account established.
• First account of the PREreview project publishes on eLIFE Labs blog.
• Session at Mozilla Festival on preprints and the future of scholarly publication — see summary and notes from the session.
• Launch of full beta testing phase with 20 volunteers — see guidelines.
  Note: The team is still collecting feedback from PREreview journal clubs and preprint authors — results will be shared when complete.

2018

• Advisory Board announced
• Granados from the University of Guelph joins the leadership team.
• Saderi receives the Mozilla Fellowship for Open Research.